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KDITKD BY 

LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A.B. 

Associate Professor of English in Brown University 



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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 
RICHARD DOHBLEDICK 
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


BY 

CHARLES DICKENS 

'I 


EDITED FOB SCHOOD USB BY 

EDMUND KEMPER BROADUS, A. M. 

PROFESSOR OP ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY 
OP SOUTH DAKOTA 


CHICAGO 

SCOTT, FOEESMAN AND COMPANY 

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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

OCT 15 1906 


Copyr 


Copyright Entry 
CLASS CL AXc., No. 

/■rs 7 ? / 

COPY B. 



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COPYRIGHT 1906 BY 
SCOTT, PORESMAN AND COMPANY 




TYPOGRAPHY — PR ESS WORK — BIN Dl NC 
ROBERT O LAW-COMPANY 
CHICAGO, ILL 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION 1 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 25 

TEXT 

A Christmas Carol 3i 

The Wreck of the Golden Mary 122 

Richard Doubledick 177 

The Cricket on the Hearth 195 

NOTES 293 








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INTRODUCTION 


The story of Charles Dickens’s life is a story of bitter 
hardship and triumphant achievement, of high courage and 
tender love. Thackeray said of A Christmas Carol “It is 
a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it 
a personal kindness,” and the description is not inapplicable 
to the life of its author. 

Charles Dickens was born, the second of eight children, 
at Landport, a suburb of Portsmouth, February 7, 1812. 
Two years after his birth his father, John Dickens, who 
was in Government employ as a clerk in the Navy Pay 
Office at Portsmouth, was transferred to Chatham, and here 
the family spent the next nine years. In Chatham Charles 
was sent to school first to an establishment in Rome-lane, 
and afterwards to a Mr. Giles, under whose care he received 
the only formal education he valued in later life. The 
future author does not seem to have been a very apt student, 
however, and he was too weak and sickly to enter into the 
companionship of boys of his own age. As a result, he was left 
to his owm resources. In a house in Chatham where five of his 
boyhood years were spent he found in an old spare room a 
little collection of books. “From that blessed little room 
Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, 
Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, 
and Robinson Crusoe came out, a glorious host, to keep me 
company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of 
something beyond that place and time, — they, and The 

i 


2 


INTRODUCTION 


Arabian Nights, and Tales of the Geniiy — and did me no 
harm; for, whatever harm was in some of them, it was 
not there for me; I knew nothing of it — every barn in the 
neighborhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of 
the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my 
mind, connected with these books, and stood for some 
locality made famous in them/’ 

His imagination, stimulated by such stirring reading, 
soon sought to express itself in creative writing, and nothing 
less ambitious than a tragedy, Misner, The Sultan of India, 
was the first recorded product of his pen. More indicative 
of the spirit that was in him was his cleverness as an im- 
promptu story-teller, his aptness as a singer of comic songs, 
and his interest in conducting a miniature theater which 
an older cousin had painted for his entertainment. 

In 1823 the family moved to London, and the eleven year 
old boy got his first glimpse of the streets he was to know so 
well. At once they became a passion with him. With 
Dickens, as with Scott, it is interesting to see how un- 
mistakably the child is father to the man. The boy of 
Edinburgh, like the boy of Chatham and London, spins 
yarns almost before he is out of petticoats, but the field of the 
one is the land of romance, while that of the other (the 
romantic Misner to the contrary notwithstanding) is the 
gaudy stage of his painted theater and the crowded purlieus 
of the metropolis. “To be taken out for a walk inip the real 
town, especially if it were anywhere about Covent Garden 
or the Strand, entranced him with pleasure. But most of all 
he had a profound attraction of repulsion to St. Giles’s. 
If he could only induce whosoever took him out to lead him 
through Seven Dials, he was supremely happy. ‘Good 
Heavens!’ he would exclaim. ‘What wild visions of prodigies 


INTRODUCTION 


3 


of wickedness, want and beggars arose in ray mind out of 
that place!' 

It was such associations and impulses as these that were 
training the boy for his vocation. The streets indeed 
promised to be his only school, for with the move to London, 
money matters went from bad to worse with John Dickens, 
and as the family fortunes declined, the boy grew daily more 
unkempt and neglected. The climax of degradation came 
with the father's incarceration in the Marshalsea. This 
was the prison in which, according to the infamous laws of 
the time, the bankrupt must be confined, either until he paid 
his debts or until he went through the legal steps necessary 
to obtain the benefit of the Insolvent Debtor's Act. When 
the father went to the prison, the mother and younger 
children took up their residence also within its bounds; and 
Charles, after every family possession had been pawned and 
starvation stared him in the face, at last found a position in 
a blacking warehouse at a salary of six shillings (about $1.50) 
a week. The warehouse was a tumble-down hovel. The 
boy's work was to cover and label the tins of blacking. 
His associates were the most uncouth of street-waifs, and 
his habitation a wretched childrens' lodging house. At 
dawn he would go to the Marshalsea, hang about until the 
gates were open, and breakfast with his parents and brothers. 
These breakfasts and his Sunday visits to the prison were 
the only ties which bound him to what passed for a home. 
For the rest, he was like the veriest outcast of the London 
street^. 

“I know I do not exaggerate unconsciously and unin- 
tentionally the scantiness of my resources and the diffi- 
culties of my life. I know that if a shilling or so were given 
me by any one, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I 


♦^Porster-Gissing, Life of Dickens. Loud. 1908. 


4 


INTRODUCTION 


worked from morning to night with common men and boys; 
a shabby child. I know that I tried, but ineffectually, not 
to anticipate my money, and to make it last the week through 
by putting it away in a drawer I had in the counting house, 
wrapped into six little parcels, each parcel containing the 
same amount, and labelled with a different day. I know that 
I have lounged about the streetSj insufficiently and unsatis- 
factorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy of God, I 
might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, 
a little robber or a little vagabond.” 

This year of misery, abject and hopeless though it seemed, 
Dickens in later years could count as one of the most potent 
of his life. The boy’s weak body grew strong under the stress 
of necessity; his sympathies were broadened by intimate 
contact with destitution of all sorts; his wonderful powers 
of observation, keen even in his childhood, caught and 
retained with photographic exactness everything that was 
picturesque and appealing in his daily life. His mind was 
like a sensitized plate, ever exposed, ever renewed. Nothing 
escaped him, nothing once caught was lost to him. The 
squalid life of the Marshalsea was to live itself over again in 
the adventures of Pickwick, in the woes of Micawber, in 
the long-drawn out misery of the Dorrits. His blacking 
factory companion. Bob Fagin, was to come to life in the 
pages of Oliver Twist The slatternly lodging-house keeper 
was to see the light again as Mrs. Pipchin in Domhey and Son' 
The maid-of-all-work in the prison was to become the 
marchioness in The Old Curiosity Shop — and every Jiovel 
and every by-way took its place in the stage-setting of some 
unforgettable scene of the novels. 

The year 1824 saw a change for the better in the boy’s 
fortunes. A small legacy enabled his father to compound 
with his creditors and move out of the Marshalsea. Charles 


INTRODUCTION 


5 


was sent to school for two years to the establishment of a 
Mr. Jones of Granby street, where the lad, if he did not 
profit much in things scholastic, at least added to his gallery 
of types for future use. In 1826, when the crowded years of 
his life numbered but fourteen, he began again to earn his 
living, this time as clerk in an attorney's office in London. 
Here, with more leisure and a slightly larger wage, he read 
assiduously at the British Museum and studied shorthand 
to fit himself for the work of a parliamentary reporter and 
journalist. At nineteen he entered upon this new calling, 
serving in the employ of various papers until his twenty- 
fourth year. 

Meanwhile he was being fitted in the best possible way 
for his future work. His experience in the law gave him the 
material w hich he was to use to such advantage in his pictures 
of the eccentricities of the legal profession and the tedious 
and tape-ridden processes of the courts. His parliamentary 
reporting enlarged his horizon, ^nd afforded him an oppor- 
tunity to study, if but externally, men of a higher class than 
he had known before. Most invaluable of all, his service 
as a journalist gave scope and training to his powers of 
observation, taught him wisdom in selection, in short, put 
him to doing as a business what he had been doing and w^as 
to do all his life con amove, making capital out of the hopes 
and fears, the loves and hates, the simplicities and oddities 
of “the man on the street.” 

In a speech made thirty years later to an assembly of 
newspaper men, Dickens paid tribute to this phase of his 
career — its educative value, its excitement and charm. “I 
have pursued the calling of a reporter under circumstances 
of which many of my brethren here can form no conception, 
I have often transcribed for the printer, from my shorthand 
QOtes, important public speeches in which the strictest 


6 


INTRODUCTION 


accuracy was required, and a mistake in which would have 
been to a young man severely compromising, writing on the 
palm of my hand, by the light of a dark lantern, in a post- | 
chaise and four, galloping through a wild country, and | 
through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate 
of fifteen miles an hour. Returning home from exciting 
j)olitical meetings in the country to the waiting press in i 
London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost every 
description of vehicle known in this country. I have been 
in my time belated in miry by-roads, towards the small hours, 
forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless carriage, 
with exhausted horses and drunken postboys, and have 
got back in time for publication. These trivial things I 
mention as an assurance to you that I never have forgotten 
the fascination of that old puTsuit. The pleasure that I 
used to feel in the rapidity and dexterity of its exercise has 
never faded out of my breast. Whatever little cunning of 
hand or head I took to it, or, acquired in it, I have so retained 
that I fully believe I could resume it to-morrow, , very little 
the worse from long disuse. To this present year of my 

life I sometimes beguile the tedium of 

the moment by mentally following the speakers in the old, 
old way; and sometimes, if you can believe me, I even find 
my hand going on the table-cloth, taking an imaginary note of 
it all,” And elsewhere he wrote; “To the wholesome 
training of severe newspaper work, when I was a very young 
man, I constantly refer my first successes.” 

But skillful as Dickens had become as a journalist, his 
powers were already seeking larger and more satisfying 
forms of expression. It is significant of his type of mind 
that he should have made an effort at this point of his career 
to go upon the stage. From his childhood days of the 
njiniature theater and the coinic song, the actor’s career had 


INTRODUCTION 


7 


fascinated him. His few school successes had been in 
elocution. In his brief span, he had already played many 
parts on the stage of life, and always, it 'would seem, with 
that sense of the pictorial, of the exits and the entrances, that 
power of detachment, of seeing himself objectively in his 
environment, which made the step to the professional actor’s 
life but a short one. Luckily, however, a brief illness 
deferred his plan, and before it could be put into execution, 
Dickens had found himself. 

Of his manner of entrance into the glories of authorship, 
the author tells in the preface to The Pwkwich Papers. 
His first effusion, A Dinner at Poplar Walk, (afterwards 
published as Mr. Minns and his Cousin), addressed to the 
editor of the “Monthly Magazine,” was “dropped stealthily 
one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling, in a dark 
letter box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street,” 
and when it appeared in all the glory of print, he “"walked 
down to Westminster Hall and turned into it for half an hour,” 
because his eyes “were so dimmed with joy and pride that 
they could not bear the street and were not fit to be seen 
there.” 

This first success was not sufficient to warrant him in giving 
up his work as a reporter, but for the next two years he 
followed up his first sketch with others in similar vein, adopt- 
ing in the course of time the pen name Boz, borrowed from 
his brother Augustus, whom Charles, in honor of the Vicar of 
Wakefield, had nicknamed IMoses. This, “facetiously pro- 
nounced through the nose became Boses, and being shortened, 
became Boz.” In 1836 these sketches were collected and 
published in book form under the title. Sketches by Boz, 
Illustrative of Every Day Life and Every Day People. “Every 
day people” — so promptly did Dickens emphasize his 
choice of the material in which he was to do his great work. 


8 


INTRODUCTION 


The Sketches by Boz, with illustrations by Cruikshank, 
an admirable pen-artist whose name was always thereafter 
to be associated with Dickens, attracted a good deal of 
attention, and opened the way for the author’s first great 
success, Pickwick. This story, if story it may be called, 
grew out of a projected series of comic drawings of cockney 
sporting life to which Dickens had been asked to give reason 
for existence in the shape of humorous sketches. He de- 
manded from the publishers — and received — a larger freedom 
of plan in what he should write, selected as the cognomen 
of his hero the name of a famous old coach proprietor of 
Bath, surrounded Mr. Pickwick by a group of characters 
conceived in a spirit of good humored satire and exaggera- 
tion, and carried the group in a succession of desultory 
rambles through England. The book was published, as 
was the custom of that day, in numbers, and, as the suc- 
cessive issues appeared, it did not take the public long to 
discover that in the creator of the Wellers, of Mr. Pickwick 
and Mr. Snodgrass, of Mr. Winkle and the rest of that 
inimitable company, the nineteenth century had found 
its greatest humorist. 

The year of the appearance of the first half of Pickwick, 
1836, may therefore properly be taken as the turning point 
in Dickens’s fortunes, and the beginning of his career as a 
writer of fiction. He married, in the spring of this y-ear, 
Catherine Hogarth, daughter of a fellow worker on the 
paper in which most of the Boz sketches had been published, 
and upon his return to London after the honeymoon, gave uj) 
reporting and set himself to meet the demand which Pickwick 
had created. 

To the mass of readers who had held their sides over the 
reflections of Sam Weller and the credulity of Mr. Pickwick, 
Dickens’s second novel must have come as an extraordinary 


INTRODUCTION 


9 


surprise. Oliver Twist (1838) had its share of humor, but 
comedy was everywhere subordinated to the deep feeling of 
a man whose own boyhood was still fresh in his mind, and 
who was mighty to avenge for others what he had suffered 
himself. It was the year when Charles Dickens was a waif 
among other waifs that furnished the text for Oliver Twist, 
and the story of little Oliver, ’prenticed to a pickpocket, and 
surrounded by companions who were children in years but 
old in wickedness, was told with grim realism. There was 
no need for Dickens to point the moral or sacrifice his art 
by sermonizing. It was enough simply to tell the story of 
these pathetic little outcasts to arouse humane and thoughtful 
people everywhere to the establishment of reform schools and 
societies for the protection of children. Oliver Twist was 
the first of the long line of English ‘‘purpose-novels,” and 
in that the narrative did not distort the truth to further the 
ends of reform, it is no disgrace to the novelist’s art to call 
it so. 

Oliver Twist served not only to enhance Dickens’s reputa- 
tion as a novelist, but also to put him in a position perhaps 
even more honorable — a position in which his later novels 
confirmed him — as a great social reformer. Similarly re- 
formative in purpose is Nicholas Nicklehy, which was 
written along with Oliver Twist and published in the follow- 
ing year. In preparation for this novel, the author made a 
special study of the cheap schools of Yorkshire to the evils 
of which his attention had already been called. The result in 
Dotheboy’s Hall, presided over by the unforgettable Mr. 
Squeers, did much to ridicule the system out of existence. 

At this time, Dickens’s fertility of invention and physical 
endurance were unexampled. He was keeping several 
novels going at once; he was the recipient of much more 
social attention than he liked; he was taking part in amateur 


10 


INTRODUCTION 


theatricals; he was pouring forth a flood of sketches and 
reviews; he was a voluminous correspondent; and at night, 
with a day’s work comprehensive enough for three men 
behind him, he would wander restlessly through the streets of 
London, covering fifteen or twenty miles at a stretch, feeding 
his insatiable appetite for excitement, and registering every 
quaint face and odd phrase upon the tablets of his memory. 
“There never was a man so unlike a professional writer,” 
wrote the Irish novelist, Percy Fitzgerald; “of tall, wiry, 
energetic figure; brisk in movement; a head well set on; 
a face rather bronzed or sunburnt; keen, bright, searching 

eyes, and a mouth which was full of expression He had, 

indeed, much of the quiet resolute manner of command of a 
captain of a ship. He strode along briskly as he walked; 
as he listened his searching eye rested on you, and the nerves 
in his face quivered, much like those in the delicately formed 
nostrils of a finely bred dog. There was a curl or two in his 
hair at each side which was characteristic; and the jaunty 
way he wore his little morning hat, rather on one side, added 
to the effect. But when there was anything droll suggested, 
a delightful sparkle of lurking humour began to kindle and 
spread to his mouth, so that, even before he uttered any- 
thing, you felt that something irresistibly droll was at hand.” 

With his load momentarily lightened by the completion 
of Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens began a serial publication 
entitled Master Humphrey's Clock. The desultory sketches 
of this periodical soon began to take shape in a connected 
narrative and the outcome was the Old Curiosity Shop (1840), 
with its pathetic story of Little Nell. This was followed in 
1842 by Barnaby Rudge, with which Master Humphrey's Clock 
was discontinued. 

In the same year the author made a trip to America, where 
he was at first welcomed with almost frantic admiration, and 


INTRODUCTION 


11 


afterwards roundly abused for his advocacy of an Inter- 
national Copyright Act.* Returning to England he pub- 
lished a volume of American Notes (1843) which would have 
been perhaps a trifle less caustic had it not been for the 
Copyright episode. He followed this volume by Martin 
Chuzzlewit (1843), part of which gives a savage picture of 
pioneering in the western United States. But if the American 
part of the book is marred by an unworthy animus, the 
English portion is Dickens at his best. Better characteriza- 
tion, novelist has never effected than the hypocritical Pecksniff 
and the mean-spirited and vulgar Sairey Gamp, nor better 
group effects than that where the relatives of old Martin 
gather at the news of his illness to speculate and quarrel 
over their prospects of inheritance; and the climactic scene 
where old Martin himself revives enough to balance the 
scales of justice. The year of Martin Chuzzlewit saw also 
the projection of the series of Christmas stories, of which 
the Christmas Carol was the first and most successful. 

The strain under which Dickens lived was beginning to 
tell on even his extraordinary vitality, and he sought rest 
in Italy, missing intensely meanwhile the stimulus of the 
crowded London streets. In 1845 he returned only to impair 
his newly recovered strength by an abortive attempt to 
establish a daily newspaper. Again he went abroad, first to 
Switzerland and then to France, beginning during his sojourn 
Domhey and Son (1848), memorable chiefly for the sad 
story of Little Paul and the humors of Captain Cuttle. Re- 
turning to England, be threw himself once more into his 
accustomed activities, and added to his burdens by under- 

*At this period, many American publishing houses profited by the 
absence of legal restriction and pirated popular English works at will. 
Dickens, as the most successful novelist of the day, was the largest loser 
by the lack of such an Act. 


12 


INTRODUCTION 


taking another periodical. The new publication, “House- 
hold Words,’’ proved more successful than its predecessors 
and became the vehicle for many of the best of his minor 
writings. 

The turn of the century brought with it the book which 
is generally considered the author’s masterpiece. Early 
in his career Dickens had written a fragment of autobio- 
graphy but had not sought to publish it. Now the idea 
came to him to vary the form of his novels by writing in the 
first person, and this suggested the use of the autobiographical 
fragment. The result was David Copperfield (1850), the 
story of Dickens’s early life of privation and struggle, with 
whatever additions and alterations the author’s fancy dic- 
tated. In other respects also the story is more or less per- 
sonal, for Dickens’s marital experience was not unlike that of 
David, and Mr. Micawber is a close, if not very flattering, 
portrait of the author’s father. For the rest the book is better 
knit in plot-structure than most of Dickens’s novels, and 
contains, in addition to Micawber, a number of admirable 
character studies, notably the Peggottys and Miss Betsy Trot- 
wood. 

Following hard upon David Copperfield came three 
“purpose-novels”: Bleak House (1852) exploited the “law’s 
delays”; Hard Times (1854) is a study of the condition 
of the English laboring class; and Little Dorrit (1856) 
deals with the well remembered Marshalsea and at the 
same time, in the Circumlocution Office, satirizes the 
interminable processes of Government red tape. 

Three other novels he was to write, A Tale of Two Cities 
(1859), in which he achieved a notably dramatic and coherent 
plot. Great Expectations (1861), and Our Mutual Friend 
(1865), besides a great many short stories and sketches for 
“Household Words” and its successor, “All the Year Round.” 


INTRODUCTION 


13 


Meanwhile the author’s expenses were largely increased 
through his purchase of Gadshill, an estate in Chatham 
which he had coveted ever since his boyhood days there ; and 
through domestic difficulties which culminated in separation 
from his wife. Feeling that he must supplement the income 
from his novels, he turned thus late in life to a new vocation. 
Dickens had already on more than one occasion given private 
readings from his books to invited audiences; and not 
infrequently he had aided charitable enterprises by giving 
public readings; but in 1865 he began giving readings 
purely on his own account. Besides selections from his 
novels, he chose for these public occasions some of his most 
effective short stories, such as the Christmas Carol and Boots 
at the Holly Tree Inn. Enormous audiences heard him at 
all points with the utmost enthusiasm,* but his appreciation 
of the affection in which he was held and his zest in the work 
could not keep him from suffering from the strain of such 
strenuous labor. He was already showing symptoms of 
collapse, when, against the advice of his friends, he deter- 
mined in 1867 to go to America. 

Arrived in Boston, he met with a welcome of extraordinary 
warmth, and found no trace remaining of the misunderstand- 
ings and prejudices of his earlier visit. Great throngs 
attended his readings, and his six months’ tour through the 
country was a continuous ovation. In spite of his failing 
health, the impression he made upon those who remembered 
his former visit was one of undiminished power. Of his 

♦Thus one of his letters describes his audience in Dublin: “You can 
hardly imagine it. All the way from the hotel to the Rotunda (a mile) I 
had to contend against the stream of people who were turned away. When 
I got there, they had brokbn the glass in the pay-boxes, r.nd were offering 
five pounds freely for a stall. Half of my platform had to be taken down, 
and people heaped in among the ruins. You never saw such a scene.” And 
in another letter about the same occasion: “Ladies stood all night with 
their chins against my platform. Other ladies sat all night upon my steps.” 


14 


INTRODUCTION 


remarkable ability as a reader, George William Curtis wrote ; 
“Every character was individualized by the voice and by a 
slight change of expression. But the reader stood perfectly 
still, and the instant transition of the voice from the dramatic 
to the descriptive tone was unfailing and extraordinary. 
.... Scrooge, and Tiny Tim, and Sam Weller and his 
wonderful father, and Sergeant Buzfuz, and Justice Stare- 
leigh have an intenser reality and vitality than ever be- 
fore. As the reading advances, the spell becomes more en- 
trancing. The mind and heart answer instantly to every 
tone and look of the reader. In a passionate outburst, as in 
Bob Cratchit’s wail for his lost boy or in Scrooge’s prayer 
to be allowed to repent, the wdiole scene lives and throbs 
before you. And when, in the great trial of Bardell 
against Pickwick, the thick fat voice of the elder Weller 
wheezes from the gallery, ‘Put it down with a wee, me 
Lord, put it down with a wee,’ you turn to look for the 
gallery and behold the benevolent parent.” 

In 1868 Dickens returned to England, shattered in health 
but indomitable still. Very imprudently he consented 
to give another series of readings, and undertook a new 
novel, Edwin Drood. For two years he kept up the unequal 
struggle, active always in spite of great bodily weakness. 
On the eighth of June, 1870, after a day of unremitting 
labor upon his never-to-be-finished book, he was stricken 
down, and died on the following day. 

It had been a life-long conviction with the novelist that 
funeral services should alw^ays be as free as possible from 
ceremonial and publicity. For himself, he desired an 
obscure burial, and, in fact, had left explicit instructions 
in his will that no public announcement of the time and 
place of his funeral should be made and that no monument 
be erected to his memory. But the demand that his remains 


INTRODUCTION 


15 


should be interred in Westminster was so universal that his 
family yielded. With simple ceremonies he was laid to rest 
in the Abbey, with a stone bearing only his name to mark 
his resting place. 

The personality of the man who had thus risen from 
obscurity to a place among the great men of England has 
already been hinted at in the account of his life. The 
tenderness, the sympathy, the love of children, the simple- 
hearted domestic virtues w^hose portrayal constitutes one 
of the most enduring charms of his novels, he possessed 
in his own person to an unusual degree. His devotion to 
his children found expression in the enthusiasm with 
which he entered into their pleasures, played with them, 
danced with them, celebrated festivals with them, out-boyed 
the most boyish of them. He had that rare quality with 
which a few men of rich fancy have been endowed of never 
altogether growing up. Many letters from youthful readers 
of his books all over the world he answered as literally as one 
child would write to another. 

And this youthful enthusiasm of child^s play was with him 
in everything that he did. He was restless, intense, eager. 
He needed movement and excitement. He worked all day 
and rested himself by walking all night. He was intensely 
emotional, wept easily, became what he was describing, and 
wrote in a kind of frenzy. His daughter records that 
“when he was arranging and rehearsing his readings for 
Dombey, the death of Little Paul caused him such real anguish 
that .... he could only master his intense emotion by 
keeping the picture of Plorn (the author’s youngest boy) well, 
strong, and hearty, steadily before his eyes.” The death 
of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop was a personal 
f)ereavement to him, from which he did not recover for a long 
time. When he was writing A Christmas Carol, he “laughed 


16 


INTRODUCTION 


and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinary 
manner in the composition; and thinking whereof he walked 
about the black streets of London, fifteen and twenty miles 
many a night when all the sober folks had gone to bed.” 
And when it was done he “broke out like a mad man.” 

His business and social relations were carried out in the 
same spirit of intensity and wholehearted ness. Always 
working to the limit of his endurance, he was always under- 
taking some new enterprise which surpassed that limit and 
had to be given up. It was so with his schemes for periodi- 
cals, for books, for readings, for theatricals. Whenever he 
saw a case of destitution, he sought to relieve it; whenever 
he saw an abuse, he sought to reform it. He may not always 
have been wise or successful; but in social reforms alone, 
he accomplished, in the words of Daniel Webster, “more 
to ameliorate the condition of the English poor than all the 
statesmen Great Britain had sent into Parliament.” In at 
least three reforms vital to the Nation, he was one of the 
most potent factors — in the improvement of the common 
schools, in the alleviation of the laws respecting the imprison- 
ment of debtors, and in the abolishment of public executions. 
In addition, he was the moving spirit in innumerable benev- 
olent aims and started funds and founded societies of great 
private and public benefit. 

It is no wonder that such a man should have had friends. 
The choicest spirits in London gathered round him in the 
little dinners with which he celebrated the completion of each 
novel, and in Europe and America the range of his actual 
acquaintanceship was enormous. But larger still — well nigh 
incalculable — was the number of those who, never having 
seen him, yet felt a sense of intimacy with him born of their 
intimacy with and love for the children of his brain. The 
news of his death made two continents sad. 


INTRODUCTION 


17 


What has been said of his personality furnishes in a way 
the key to his art as a novelist. Dickens was at heart an 
actor, whose histrionic power was supplemented by close 
observation and a ready pen. His daughter, Mamie, in 
My Father As I Recall Flim, tells of an occasion w^hen she 
was ill and w'as carried into her father^s study during his 
working hours. “I was lying on the sofa endeavouring to 
keep perfectly quiet, while my father wrote busily and rapidly 
at his desk, when he suddenly jumped from his chair and 
rushed to a mirror which hung near, and in which I could 
see the reflection of some extraordinary facial contortions 
which he w^as making. He returned rapidly to his desk, 
wrote furiously for a few moments, and then went again to 
the mirror. The facial pantomime was resumed, and then 
turning toward, but evidently not seeing me, he began talking 
rapidly in a low voice. Ceasing this soon, however, he 
returned once more to his desk, where he remained silently 
writing until luncheon time. It was a most curious expe- 
rience for me, and one of which I did not, until later years, 
fully appreciate the purport. Then I knew that with his 
natural intensity, he had thrown himself completely into the 
character that he was creating, and that for the time being, 
he had not only lost sight of his surroundings, but had 
actually become in action, as in imagination, the creature 
of his pen.” 

The case is typical; for though Dickens may not always 
have responded physically to the impulse of his imagination 
as he did on this occasion, he was always acting the parts 
which he created. He always saw them staged. This is 
at once a gain and a loss to his readers, for while it accounts 
for the extraordinary verve and vividness of detail of his 
pictures of life, it accounts at the same time for the exag- 
geration of line, the overstress, which afford the most obvioas 


18 


INTRODUCTION 


ground for criticising him. The actor does not modulate 
his voice and gestures to the ears and eyes of his companions 
on the stage. He heightens them and exaggerates them as he 
heightens the color of his face, so that his ^ ‘effects^’ may 
define themselves with especial vividness to his audience. 
We weep over the death of Little Nell, not because we ever 
heard of a child’s dying like that, or believe that a child 
could die like that, but rather because our hearts are wrung 
with an accumulation of all the pathos that could possibly 
be concentrated into one death-scene — and we never forget 
it. We have never heard of anybody with half the smooth 
hypocrisy of Mr. Pecksniff, nor half the fa;wning humility of 
Uriah Keep, nor half the unshakable cheerfulness of Mark 
Tapley; and for that very reason we remember them and 
make companions of them and estimate our acquaintances 
in terms of them. 

This is not to say, however, that Dickens wholly mis- 
represents his world. It is not that his characters are untrue, 
but simply that they are a little more than true. It is worth 
repeating that he was a close and accurate observer with a 
marvellously retentive memory. He spent a large part of 
his life studying the “everyday people”, and in most cases he 
simply recorded what he had seen — with the “retouching” 
(to change the figure) which a photographer gives to a picture 
to heighten its effect. The result is that Dickens’s name is 
associated — not with plots, for as might have been expected 
he was seldom very successful in holding them together — 
but with types, character-studies — and he has given us the 
most comprehensive gallery of these that artist ever drew — 

Fillinjj; from time to time his humorous stage 

With all the Persons down to palsied Age 

That Life brings with her in her equipage. 


INTRODUCTION 


19 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

A Christmas Carol is at once a tract and a literary master- 
piece. As a tract it has, in the phrase of Lord Jeffrey, 
‘‘fostered more kindly feelings and prompted more positive 
acts of beneficence” than all the formal Christmas sermons 
ever preached. One likes to think of it in this way — as an 
appeal on the part of the high-spirited, generous-hearted, 
Christmas-loving Dickens to his friends everywhere to 
remember that wealth does not make Christmas happy, and 
that poverty and isolation need not make it miserable; an 
appeal to them to make Christmas what the Cratchits made 
it, a time of good will to everybody — even to the Scrooges. 
One likes to think, too, of the joy the answers to that appeal 
brought to Dickens; of the letters that “poured upon its 
author daily, all through that Christmas time — of which 
the general burden was to tell him, amid many confidences 
about their homes, how the Carol had come to be read aloud 
there, and was to be kept upon a little shelf by itself, and was 
to do them no end of good.” One likes to read the story 
with the picture in one^s mind of the author’s merry Christ- 
masing with his children — “Such dinings, such conjurings, 
such blindman’s buffings, such kissings out of old years and 
kissings in of new ones.” But to content oneself with the 
mere sentiment of the thing is to miss half the pleasure of 
A Christmas Carol. It is a delight also to see how skillfully 
Dickens has managed his artistic problem. 

It is no slight task to tell a story which nobody can possibly 
believe, and yet to make everybody believe it; but it would 
be a very skeptical person indeed who would doubt that 
Scrooge saw Marley’s ghost, any more than he would doubt 
that Marley was really dead. How does Dickens make it 
all so “natural” ? 

Well, in the first place he makes the actual living persons 


20 


INTRODUCTION 


very real to us. Scrooge in his counting-house with his 
shriveled cheeks and his thin blue lips and his blunt hard 
ways; jolly Bob Cratchit and his rollicking family; the 
careless, cynical gossipers on ‘Change, — all these belong 
to a very real world of everyday commonplace people. We 
meet them on the street any day. Some of them Dickens 
merely “sketches in”, but Scrooge is first described by the 
author and then put in a position to give us a taste of his 
own quality, in his encounters with the merry nephew and 
the amiable collectors and the shivering clerk and the hungry 
street-singer. We know just what to expect of Scrooge by 
the time he has had an interview or two. 

Into this world of the commonplace Dickens brings a 
ghost — but not too suddenly. When we are satisfied that 
Marley is really dead, we are casually reminded of what 
happened to Hamlet’s father. Then we begin to feel that 
the night and the fog are a bit uncanny; then Marley’ s 
dead face looks out of the knocker. But the sturdy Scrooge 
is not shaken, so neither are we — that is, not exactly! Then 
the notion of a hearse; and then the forbidding darkness of 
those rooms; and the swinging bells, and the clanking chain 
— and Marley! Even yet we might be disposed to doubt, 
if Dickens had done as a less skillful artist would have done, 
that is, fallen to ranting and indulged in high-flown “ghost- 
talk”. Instead, Scrooge is just what we have learned to 
expect — shrewd, skeptical., blunt, hard-headed. His re- 
marks to the ghost are just as commonplace as he is. Scrooge 
is not to be brought over if he can help it. ble tries to divert 
the ghost with a toothpick; and even when Scrooge is brought 
to his knees, he puts his hands in his breeches pockets. 
In other words, Dickens makes us sw'allow the unreal in 
his ghost story by washing it down with an infinite number 
of little commonplace realities. 


INTRODUCTION 


21 


There are other points worth noticing too — the skill with 
which the rich Scrooge^s meanness at the festive season is 
contrasted with the scenes of poverty lightened with Christ- 
mas cheer; the art with which we are made to apprehend 
the whole life-history of Scrooge by those few scenes in the 
vision of the Christmas Past; the way the author has laid 
aside his more lightsome humor to portray that grim and 
awful death scene; the tender and pathetic picture of Tiny 
Tim, with touches in it here and there which we have to 
grow up to understand ; and finally, the stages in old Scrooge’s 
reformation, with that page or two at the close where every 
line seems to vibrate with the sheer excitement of his Christ- 
mas joy. 

These are a few of the things worth studying in the Carol: 
but after all the best thing about it is the abounding human 
love which breathes through its pages — the quality which 
evoked from Thackeray these high words of praise — 
is the work of the master of all the English humourists now 
alive; the young man who came and took his place calml}' 

at the head of the whole tribe, and who has kept it 

Who can listen to objections regarding such a book as this ? 
It seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman 
who reads it a personal kindness. The last two people I 
heard speak of it were women; neither knew the other, or 
the author, and both said, by way of criticism “God bless 
him As for Tiny Tim .... there is not a 
reader in England but that little creature will be a bond 
of union between the author and him; and he will say 
of Charles Dickens, as the woman just now, ‘God bless 
him !’ What a feeling is this for a writer to be able to inspire 
and what a reward to reap!” 


22 


INTRODUCTION 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

The Cricket on the Hearth (1846) originated in a long ; 
cherished idea of the author’s to establish a weekly periodical 
'to be called “The Cricket,” with the motto; “A cheerful 1 
creature that chirrups on the hearth,” The plan for the" 
periodical, temporarily abandoned, was later carried out in. 
“Household Words,” and The Cricket became the germ 
of the third Christmas story. “It would be a delicate and 
beautiful fancy for a Christmas book,” Dickens wrote, 
“making the Cricket a little household God — silent in the 
wrong and sorrow of the tale, and loud again when all went 
well and happily.” Admirably successful in carrying out 
this plan, Dickens never lets us forget the presence and ; 
interest of th^ Spirit of the Hearth. The merry duet of 
cricket and kettle at the beginning, rising gradually out of i 
prose into a most rapturous rhythm, fades into silence as ^ 
sorrow and misunderstanding come upon the Peerybingles. - 
But when matters are at their worst, and the pleasant little 
story trembles on the verge of tragedy, the cricket’s chirp 
saves John from wrong-doing and recalls his manhood. 
Cheerful and helpful, the cricket on occasion can be tender 
too, chirping “in a low, faint, sorrowing way,” audible only 
to the blind girl’s ear. 

The story which grows up around this guardian spirit has 
also some claims to our attention. It is a simple plot, in 
which two threads are successfully interwoven. The minor 
characters, Tilly Slowboy, the Plummers, Tackleton, and 
the Fieldings all contribute to the working out of the central 
theme. The complicating element, in the person of the 
Unknown,* is cleverly managed; the suspense is skillfully 

♦The student should note the part played by the Unknown in binding 
the two parts together. 


INTRODUCTION 


23 


developed, throus^h the insinuations of Tackleton, the 
“baby-talk” of Tilly, and the embarrassment of Dot; and 
the denouement is unquestionably dramatic. In its drama- 
tized form, the role of Caleb Plummer was a favorite one 
with the great actor, Joseph Jefferson.* 

Two possible defects in the story the student would do 
well to consider — first, whether the reasons for Dot’s keeping 
the secret from John are sufficient to warrant her in imperil- 
ling her life-happiness; and second, whether the “conversion” 
of Tackleton at the close, pleasantly as it fits in with the 
general scheme, is in any way warranted by our knowledge 
of his character. 

THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 

It should be observed that the impression of reality gained 
from this vivid narrative is due to the extreme simplicity 
with which the story is told. The language is blunt and 
straightforward as befits a seaman. The incident is tragic, 
but the captain does not indulge in any heroics. He is 
scrupulous to give only the facts, and he reinforces the story 
with the most minute details — such as the “bag of coffee, 
roasted but not ground (thrown in ... by mistake for 
something else),” and the reference to the care with which 
Mrs. Atherfield had bound up her hair just before the evening 
hymn every day, until Lucy died. It is thus that Defoe in 
Robinson Crusoe puts the stamp of truth upon adventures 
which are pure fiction. 

A remarkable piece of description is that in which the 

*“ It seems strange that Dickens’s plots, though Interesting, and his 
dialogue and characters apparently dramatic, should be unsatisfactory 
when arranged for the stage. The story of The Cricket on the Hearth is the 
one exception, for with trifling condensation it can be acted with effect from 
the book itself, having all the completeness and direct motives that go to 
make a play.”— Joseph Jefferson, The Cricket on the Hearth, introduction 


24 


INTRODUCTION 


captain tells what he saw in the moment when the blue-light 
first illuminated the shipwreck. 

THE STORY OF RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 

The student should note the adroitness with which the 
author has varied the successive steps of Richard Double- 
dick's promotion, and the way his ranks are introduced; 
the skill with which the dialogue is handled, and the ingenuity 
of the plot. The story falls naturally into three divisions — 
the reformation of Richard Doubledick, his career as a 
soldier, and his finding the French officer. Each of these, 
retold from memory, would make excellent material for a 
narrative theme. Depending for his interest upon plot, 
Dickens makes no special effort at characterization; but 
the student may profitably ask himself whether he does not 
get a clearer idea of Captain Taunton's character from the 
one scene in the barracks, than he does of Richard Double- 
dick's from the entire story. 


SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 


1 . 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 

Questions. 

How many and what groups of characters do you find in 
this story? What binds the groups together? Which 
group seems to have most effect on Scrooge? Which seems 
to you most vivid ? How is the atmosphere of mystery devel- 
oped early in the story? Note the different things which 
prepare us for the coming of Marley’s ghost. How does 
Dickens use the word ghost in this story ? 

As you read, make a list of vivid similes and descriptive 
phrases; e. g. “In walked Mrs. Fezziwig one vast sub- 
stantial smile.’^ .... “but the clerk’s fire was so much 
smaller that it looked like one coal.” 

How is the gradual transformation of Scrooge effected ? 

What is the central thought or purpose of the story ? 

Theme Subjects. 

1. Description of the three Christmas Spirits. 

2. Bob Cratchit’s Dinner. 

3. Tiny Tim. 

4. The Shops as you know them at Christmas time. 

5. Christmas Frolics in your own Home. 

6. How the Christmas Spirits transformed Scrooge. 

THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 
Questions. 

Compare the introduction in this story with that in each of 
the others. 

Is the manner of the narrative in character with the 
person of the narrator? 

Is the description of the storm effective? What words or 
])hrases contribute to the vividness? 


25 


26 


SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 


What picturesque contrasts do you find among the 
people on shipboard? Do you find in any characters 
in the other stories qualities such as those shown by the 
Captain? by John Steadiman? by Lucy? How do you 
interpret Mr. Rarx’s repeated references to the gold? 
Had he been in California before? What do you think 
his purpose was in making his voyage on the Golden 
Mary f 

Do you think the shipwrecked people were saved? By 
what means? Did they reach California? What events 
of importance took place there? How did they return to 
England? 


Theme Subjects. 

Write a brief story of a hunt for treasure. (Read Steven- 
son’s “Treasure Island/’ Irving’s “The Money-Diggers” 
in “Tales of a Traveller,” and Poe’s “The Gold Bug.”) 

RICHARD DOUBLEDICK. 

Questions. 

How does the author give the setting for this story ? Is it 
given more promptly and directly than in A Christmas 
Carol? Can you suggest a reason for this ? 

Is the account of Doubledick’s early life given before or 
after the story actually begins? Do you consider this ar- 
rangement artistic? Compare this with the Introduction in 
A Christmas Carol. 

Tell the story briefiy selecting only the parts "which are 
indispensable to the plot. What is the main thread of the 
narrative (the Main Action) ? What is the beginning of the 
action (the Exciting Force) ? What is the turning point 
(the Climax) ? The end (the Solution) ? 

Trace the steps in the rise of Richard Doubledick from 
Private to Captain. Is each step prepared for, or justified by 
facts given in the story? Does rise in rank mark a corres- 
ponding development in character, or is Doubledick’s regen- 
eration completed in the first interview with Captain Taun- 
ton ? 


SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 


27 


How is the motive of Doubledick’s revenge kept before the 
reader? Refer to the exact instances. Is this motive ever 
lost sight of? Would the outcome have been different had 
the circumstances of the meeting of Doubledick and the 
French officer been different? Is there any preparation for 
the peaceful outcome of the meeting ? 

Is there any event in the story for which you think there is 
insufficient preparation ? 

How do you explain the effect wffiich Captain Taunton has 
on Doubledick? Compare it wnth the effect of the Christ- 
mas Spirits on Scrooge. 

Has the story a moral purpose ? If so, wffiat is it 
Theme Subjects. 

How Captain Taunton changed the character of Richard 
Doubleclick. 

The Charge at Badajos. 

In Brussels after Waterloo. 

Captain Doubledick at the Old Chateau. 

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 

Questions. 

What is the time, place, and social background of this 
story? Is it given directly and promptly, or by inference 
and with deliberation ? 

Flow is the reader led into the narrative? Are there any 
preliminary scenes which give us impressions of characters? 
Is this method artistic ? 

Tell the story briefly selecting only the points which are 
indispensable to the plot. What is the Main Action ? The 
Exciting Force? The Climax? The Solution? Are there 
any subordinate actions ? 

Who are the principal characters ? The subordinate 
characters ? Upon w hat principle do you make this division ? 
How is each connected with the main action ? What charac- 
ters are most vividly portrayed ? 

Who is the heroine of The Cricket on the Hearth^ Have 


28 


SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 


the Other stories heroines? Who is the hero? On what 
principle do yon make this selection ? 

Is there any preparation for the return of Edward Plummer? 
For the change in Tackleton ? 

Note the rhythm and rhyme of the Kettle’s and Cricket’s 
song, and the way in which they sympathize with the real 
personages of the story. 

This story was dramatized and presented on the stage for 
many years by Joseph Jefferson, an American actor. Which 
scenes should you think best adapted for dramatic presenta- 
tion ? Why ? 

Theme Subjects. 


The Toy Shop. 

Caleb and Bertha. 

The Peerybingle Household. 

Mrs. Peerybingle’ s Kitchen. 

A Modern Kitchen. 

Tilly Slowboy. 

The Change in the Character of Tackleton. 

The Regeneration of Scrooge, Richard Doubledick, and 
Tackleton. 

Tiny Tim and Golden Lucy. 

The personality of Dickens as revealed in these Stories. 


General Questions. 

Contrast the methods of beginning the stories. In which 
does the plot open promptly? In which does the author 
give elaborate prologues ? In which do you first become in- 
terested in the plot ? in the characters ? Can you justify each 
method in the instance in which it is used ? 

In which of these four stories is the plot element most 
prominent? Which characters interest you most? Which 
scenes ? 

Is the ending of the stories happy in every instance ? Does 
a shadow rest on any character ? 

Are there any points of similiarity in the portrayal of Tiny 
Tim and of Lucy ? 


SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 


29 


Do you find instances in which one characteristic or one 
descriptive phrase is always applied to a character ? 

Do any characters seem exaggerated? 

Criticize the titles. 

The following characteristics of Dickens have been pointed 
out by critics.* Can you illustrate each by extracts from 
these stories ? 

1. Fondness for Caricature — Exaggeration — Grotesque- 
ness. 

2. Genial Humor. 

3. Incarnation of Characteristics — Single Strokes. 

4. Descriptive Power — Minuteness of Observation — Vivid- 
ness. 

5. Tender, sometimes Mawkish, Pathos. 

6. Gayety — Animal Spirits — Good-Fellowship. 

7. Sincerity — Manliness — Earnestness. 

8. Broad Sympathy — Plain, Practical Humanity 

9. Dramatic Power. 

10. Vulgarity — Artificiality. 

11. Diffuseness. 


^Quoted by Bliss Perry in “A Study of Prose Fiction.’' 





A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

STAVE ONE 


marley’s ghost 

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt 
whatever about that. The register of his burial was' 
signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and 
the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s 
name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to 5 
put his hand to. Old Alarley was as dead as a door-nail. 

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own 
knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door- 
nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a 
coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the 10 
trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; 
and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the 
Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to 
repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door- 
nail. 15 

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How 
could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners 
for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his 
sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his 
sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. 20 
And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the 
sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business 
on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an 
undoubted bargain. 

The mention of Alarley’s funeral brings me back to the 25 
point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley 

31 


32 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing 
wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. 
If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father 
died before the play began, there would be nothing more 
remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly 
wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any 
other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark 
in a breezy spot — say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance 
— literally to astonish his son’s weak mind. 

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There 
it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: 
Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge 
and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business 
called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he 
answered to both names: it was all the same to him. 

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, 
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, 
clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, 
from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; 
20 secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The 
cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed 
nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his 
eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his 
grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his 
25 eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low 
temperature always about with him; he iced his office in 
the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas. 

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. 
No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. 
30 No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow 
was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less 
open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to 
have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and 
sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one 
8.5 respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and 
Scrooge never did. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


33 


Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with 
gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When 
will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to 
bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, 
no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the 
way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind 
men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him 
coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and 
up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they 
said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master I” 

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he 
liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, 
warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was 
what the knowing ones call “nuts” to Scrooge. 

Once upon a time — of all the good days in the year, on 
Christmas Eve — old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. 
It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he 
could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up 
and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and 
stamping their feet upon the pavement-stones to warm 
them. The City clocks had only just gone three, but it 
was quite dark already: it had not been light all day: and 
candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring 
offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. 
The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and 
was so dense without, that although the court was of the 
narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. 
To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring 
everything, one might have thought that Nature lived 
hard by, and was brewing on a large scale. 

The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open that 
he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little 
cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge 
had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much 
smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t 
replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room ; 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 

35 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 

35 


34 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the 
master predicted that it would be necessary for them to 
part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, 
and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, 
not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed. 

“A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a 
cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, 
who came upon him so quickly that this was the first 
intimation he had of his approach. 

“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!” 

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog 
and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a 
glow; his face was ruddy and handsome ; his eyes sparkled, 
and his breath smoked again. 

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. 
“You don’t mean that, I am sure.” 

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What 
right have you to be merry? What reason have you to 
be merry? You’re poor enough.” 

“Come, then,” returned the nephew, gayly. “What 
right have you to be dismal ? What reason have you to 
be morose? You’re rich enough.” 

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur 
of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up 
with “Humbug.” 

“Don’t be cross, uncle,” said the nephew. 

“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live 
in such a world of fools as this ? ^Merry Christmas! Out 
upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but 
a time for paying bills without money; a time for find- 
ing yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time 
for balancing your books and having every item in ’em 
through a round dozen of months presented dead against 
you? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge, indignantly, 
“every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas,’ on 
his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried 


A CHRIST.MAS CAROL 


35 


with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!” 

“Under pleaded the nephew. 

“Nephew!” returned the unde, sternly, “keep Christ- 
mas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.” 

“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you 
don’t keep it.” 

“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Much 
good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!” 

“There are many things from which I might have 
derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” 
returned the nephew: “Christmas among the rest. But 
I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when 
it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its 
sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can 
be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, 
charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the 
long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by 
one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to 
think of people below them as if they really were fellow- 
passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures 
bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though 
it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I 
believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; 
and I say, God bless it!” 

The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded: be- 
coming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked 
the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark forever. 

“Let me hear another sound from you,” said Scrooge, 
“and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation.” 
“You’re quite a powerful speaker. Sir,” he added, turning 
to his nephew. “I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.” 

“Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-mor- 
row.” 

Scrooge said that he would see him yes, indeed he 

did. He went the whole length of the expression, and 
said that he would see him in that extremity first. 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“But why?” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “Why? 

“Why did you get married ?” said Scrooge. 

“Because I fell in love.” 

“Because you fell in love!” growled Scrooge, as if that 
5 were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than 
a merry Christmas. “Good afternoon!” 

“Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that 
happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now ?” 

“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge. 

10 “I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why 
(*annot we be friends?” 

“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge. 

“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. 
We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a 
15 party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, 
and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A 
Merry Christmas, uncle!” 

“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge. 

“And A Happy New Year!” 

20 “Good afternoon!” said Scrooge. 

His nephew left the room without an angry word, not- 
withstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow 
the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he 
was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them 
25 cordially. 

“There’s another fellow,” muttered Scrooge; who over- 
heard him: “my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and 
a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll 
retire to Bedlam.” 

80 This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let 
two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant 
to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge’s 
office. They had books and papers in their hands, and 
bowed to him. 

“Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,” said one of the 


35 


A CHRISTMAS. CAROL 


37 


gentlemen, referring to his list. “Have I the pleasure of 
addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?’' 

“Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,’ ^ Scrooge 
replied. “He died seven years ago, this very night.” 

“We have no doubt his liberality is well represented 5 
by his surviving partner,” said the gentleman, presenting 
his credentials. 

It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. 

At the ominous word “liberality,” Scrooge frowned, and 
shook his head, and handed the credentials back. lo 

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said 
the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually 
desirable that we should make some slight provision for 
the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present 
time. Many thousands are in want of common neces- is 
saries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common 
comforts. Sir.” 

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge. 

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down 
the pen again. so 

“And the Union w^orkhouses ?” demanded Scrooge. 
“Are they still in operation?” 

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I 
could say they were not.” 

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, 25 
then?” said Scrooge. 

“Both very busy. Sir.” 

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that 
something had occurred to stop them in their useful 
course,” said Scrooge. “Pm very glad to hear it.” ^ 

“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish 
Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” 
returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring 
to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and 
means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a 35. 


38 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abund- 
ance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?’’ 

‘"Nothing!” Scrooge replied. 

“You wish to be anonymous?” 

5 “I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you 
ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I 
don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford 
to make idle people merry. I help to support the estab- 
lishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those 
10 who are badly off must go there.” 

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.” 

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had 
better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides 
— excuse me — I don’t know that.” 

15 “But you might know it,” observed the gentleman. 

“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough 
for a man to understand his own business, and not to 
interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me con- 
stantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!” 

20 Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their 
point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his 
labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in 
a more facetious temper than was usual with him. 

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that 
25 people ran about with flaring links, proffering their 
services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct 
them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose 
gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at Scrooge 
out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and 
30 struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous 
vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its 
frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In 
the main street at the corner of the court, some labourers 
were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire 
in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and 
36 boys were gathered : warming their hands and winking 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


39 


their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug 
being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed, 
and turned to misanthropic ice. The bi:ightness of the 
shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp 
heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. 
Poulterers’ and grocers’ trades became a splendid joke; 
a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible 
to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale 
had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold 
of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty 
cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s 
household should; and even the little tailor, whom he 
had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being 
drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-mor- 
row’s pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the 
baby sallied out to buy the beef. 

.Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting, 
cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the 
Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, 
instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he 
would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one 
scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry 
cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at 
Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol; 
but at the first sound of 

“God bless you, merry gentleman! 

May nothing you dismay!” 

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that 
the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and 
even more congenial frost. 

At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house 
arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his 
stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk 
in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and 
put on his hat. 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“You’ll want all day to-morrow, 1 suppose?” said 
Scrooge. 

“If quite convenient, Sir.” 

“It’s not convenient,” said Scrooge, “and it’s not fair. 
5 If I was to Stop half-a-crown for it, you’d think yourself 
ill-used. I’ll be bound?” 

The clerk smiled faintly. 

“And yet,” said Scrooge, “you don’t think 7ne ill-used, 
when I pay a day’s wages for no work.” 

10 The clerk observed that it was only once a year. 

“A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every 
twenty-fifth of December!” said Scrooge, buttoning his 
great-coat to the chin. “But I suppose you must have the 
whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning!” 

15 The clerk promised that he w^ould; and Scrooge walked 
out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, 
and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter 
dangling belo^^ his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), 
went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of 
30 boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, 
and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could 
pelt, to play at blindman’s-buff. 

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melan- 
choly tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and 
25 beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’ s-book, 
went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once 
belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy 
suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, 
where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely 
30 help fancying it must have run there when it was a young 
house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and 
have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, 
and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, 
the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard 
35 was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, 
was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


41 


hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it 
seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful 
meditation on the threshold. 

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular 
about the knocker on the door, except that it was very 5 
large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night 
and morning, during his whole residence in that place; 
also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about 
him as any man in the City of London, even including — 
which is a bold word — the corporation, aldermen, and la 
livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not 
bestowed one thought on IVIarley, since his last mention 
of his seven-years’ dead partner that afternoon. And 
then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it liappened 
that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw is 
in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate 
process of change: not a knocker, but Marley’s face. 

Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as 
the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light 
about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not 20 
angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used 
to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly 
forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath 
or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were 
perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made 25 
it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face 
and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own 
expression. 

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was 
a knocker again. 30 

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was 
not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a 
stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his 
hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, 
walked in, and lighted his candle. s-s 

He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he 


42 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, 
as if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of 
Marley’s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was 
nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and 
5 nuts that held the knocker on; so he said “Pooh, pooh!’' 
and closed it with a bang. 

The sound resounded through the house like thunder. 
Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant’s 
cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes 
of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by 
echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, 
and up the stairs: slowly too: trimming his candle as he 
went. 

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six 
la up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act 
of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a 
hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, -with the 
splinter-bar towards the wall, and the door towards the 
balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of 
20 width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the 
reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse 
going on before him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas- 
lamps out of the street wouldn’t have lighted the entry 
too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with 
25 Scrooge’s dip. 

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that: darkness 
is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his 
heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all 
was right. He had just enough recollection of the face 
80 to desire to do that. 

Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they 
should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the 
sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; 
and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his 
35 head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in 
the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


43 


hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. 
Tyumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, 
two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker. 

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself 
in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom 5 
Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; 
put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; 
and sat down before the fire to take his gruel. 

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter 
night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood lo 
over it, before he could extract the least sensation of 
warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was 
an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and 
paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to 
illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, is 
Pharaohs’ daughters. Queens of Sheba, Angelic mes- 
sengers descending through the air on clouds like feather- 
beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea 
in butter-boats, hundreds of figures, to attract his thoughts; 
and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like 20 
the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. 

If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power 
to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed 
fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy 
of old Marley’s head on every one. 25 

“Humbug!” said Scrooge; and walked across the room. 

After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw 
his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest 
upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and 
communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a so 
chamber in the highest story of the building. It was 
with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable 
dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. 

It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a 
sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell 35 
in the house. 


44 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, 
but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had 
begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking 
noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging 
5 a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar. 
Scrooge then remembered* to have heard that ghosts in 
haunted houses were described as dragging chains. 

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and 
then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; 
10 then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards 
his door. 

“It’s humbug still!” said Scrooge. “I won’t believe 
it.” 

His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it 
came on through the heavy door, and passed into the 
room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying 
flame leaped up, as though it cried “I know him! Mar- 
ley’s Ghost!” and fell again. 

The same face; the very same. JMarley in his pigtail, 
20 usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the 
latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and 
the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped 
about his middle. It was long, and wound about him 
like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it 
25 closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, 
and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was trans- 
]3arent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking 
through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his 
coat behind. 

30 Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no 
bowels, but he had never believed it until now. 

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked 
the phantom through and through, and saw it standing 
before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its 
35 death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the 
folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


45 


wrapper he had not observed before : he was still incred- 
ulous, and fought against his senses. 

“How now!” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. 
“What do you want with me?” 

^ “Much!” — Marley’s voice, no doubt about it. 

“Who are you?” 

“Ask me who I was” 

“Who were you then?” said Scrooge, raising his voice. 
“You^re particular — for a shade.” He was going to say 
“to a shade,” but substituted this, as more appropriate. 

“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.” 

“Can you — can you sit down?” asked Scrooge, looking 
doubtfully at him. 

“I can.” 

“Do it then.” 

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t know 
V'hether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a 
condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its 
being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an 
embarrassing explanation. But the Ghost sat down on 
the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used 
to it. 

“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost. 

“I don’t,” said Scrooge. 

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond 
that of your senses ?” 

“I don’t know,” said Scrooge. 

“Why do you doubt your senses?” 

“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. 
A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. 
You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, 
a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. 
There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever 
you are!” 

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, 
nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of 
distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror ; 
for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his 
bones. 

5 To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence f^r 
a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with 
him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's 
being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. 
Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the 
10 case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its 
hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by 
the hot vapour from an oven. 

“You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning 
quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and 
15 wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the 
vision's stony gaze from himself. 

“I do," replied the Ghost. 

“You are not looking at it," said Scrooge. 

“But I see it," said the Ghost, “notwithstanding." 

20 “Well!" returned Scrooge. “I have but to swallow 
this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion 
of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you 
— humbug!" 

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its 
25 chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge 
held on tight to his chair to save himself from falling in a 
swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the 
phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if 
it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped 
30 down upon its breast! 

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands 
before his face. 

“Mercy!" he said. “Dreadful apparition, why do you 
trouble me?" ' 

“Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, “do 
you believe in me or not ?’ 


35 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


47 


“I do,” said Scrooge. “I must. But why do spirits 
walk the earth, and why do they come to me?” 

“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, 
“that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his 
fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit 
goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. 
It is doomed to wander through the world — oh, woe is 
me! — and witness what it cannot share, but might have 
shared on earth, and turned to happiness!” 

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain, and 
wrung its shadowy hands. 

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell 
me why?” 

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. 
“I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on 
of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. 
Is its pattern strange to you ?” 

Scrooge trembled more and more. 

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight 
and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was 
full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves 
ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous 
chain!” 

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expec- 
tation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty 
fathoms of iron cable; but he could see nothing. 

“Jacob,” he said imploringly. “Old Jacob Marley, 
tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob.” 

“I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. “It comes 
from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed 
by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I 
tell you what I would. A very little more, is all per- 
mitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot 
linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our 
counting-house — mark me! — in life my spirit never roved 


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48 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL' 


beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; ; 
and weary journeys lie before me!” ‘ 

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became ■ 
thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. ) 
5 Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, ; 
but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees. ■ 

“ You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,” j 
Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with J 
humility and deference. ] 

10 “Slow!” the Ghost repeated. | 

“Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. “And travelling 
all the time!” 

“The whole time,” said the Ghost. “No rest, no peace. 
Incessant torture of remorse.” 

15 “You travel fast?” said Scrooge. 

“On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost. 

“You might have got over a great quantity of ground in 
seven years,” said Scrooge. 

The Ghost, on hearing this, set uj) another cry, and 
20 clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the 
night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting 
it for a nuisance. 

“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the 
phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour, 
25 by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into 
eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all 
developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working 
kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, wdll find 
its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. 
30 Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for 
one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! 
such was I!” 

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” 
faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. 
35 “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 
“Mankind was my business. ^ The common welfare was 


* A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


49 


my business; charity, mercy, forbearan«?e, and benevo- 
lence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade 
were but a droj) of water in the comprehensive ocean 
of my business!” 

It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the 5 
cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon 
the ground again. 

“At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre said, 

“I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow- 
beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to lo 
that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! 
Were there no poor homes to which its light would have 
conducted m^!” 

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre 
going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly. 15 

“Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly 
gone.” 

“I will,” said Scrooge. “But don’t be hard upon me! 
Don’t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!” 

“How it is that I appear before you in a shape that 20 
you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside 
you many and many a day.” 

It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and 
wiped the perspiration from his brow. 

“That is no light part of my penance,” pursued the 25 
Ghost. “I am here to-night to warn you, that you have 
yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance 
and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.” 

“You were always a good friend to me,” said Scroogf . 
“Thank’ee!” 30 

“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three 
Spirits.” 

Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s 
had done. 

“Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?” 3h 
he demanded, in a falteripg voice. 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“It is ” 

“I — I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge. ; 

“Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot 
hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, 
when the bell tolls one.” 

“Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, 
Jacob?” hinted Scrooge. 

“Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. 
The third upon the next night when the last stroke of 
twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; 
and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has 
passed between us!” 

When it had said these words, the spectre took its 
wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as 
before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth 
made, when the jaws were brought together by the band- 
age. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his 
supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, 
with its chain wound over and about its arm. 

The apparition walked backward from him; and at 
every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that 
when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beck- 
oned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were 
within two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held up 
its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge 
stopped. 

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: 
for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of 
confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamen- 
tation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and 
self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, 
joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the 
bleak, dark night. 

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his 
curiosity. He looked out. 

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 51 

thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every 
one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few 
(they might be guilty governments) were linked together; 
none were free. Many had been personally known to 
Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with 
one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron 
safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being 
unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom 
it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them 
all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, 
in human matters, and had lost the power forever. 

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist en- 
shrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their 
spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it 
had been when he walked home. 

Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by 
which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, 
as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts 
were undisturbed. He tried to say “Humbug!^* but 
stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion 
he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse 
of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the 
Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, 
went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep 
upon the instant. 


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STAVE TWO 


THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS 

When Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out 
of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent 
window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was 
endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, 
5 when the chimes of a neighbouring church struck the four 
quarters. So he listened for the hour. 

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from 
six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to 
twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when 
10 he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must 
have got into the works. Twelve! 

He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this 
most preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve; 
and stopped. 

15 “Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, “that I can have 
slept through a whole day and far into another night. 
It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, 
and this is tw^elve at noon!” 

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of 
20 bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged 
to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown 
before he could see anything; and could see very little 
then. All he could make out was, that it was still very 
foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise 
25 of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as 
there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten 
off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This 
was a great relief, because “three days after sight of this 
First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his 

52 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


53 


order,” and so forth, would have become a mere United 
States’ security if there were no days to count by. 

Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, 
and thought it over and over and over, and could make 
nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed 5 
he was; and the more he endeavoured not to think, the 
more he thought. Marley’s Ghost bothered him exceed- 
ingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after 
mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew 
back again, like a strong spring released, to its first posi- 10 
tion, and presented the same problem to be worked all 
through, “Was it a dream or not?” 

Scrooge lay in this state until the chimes had gone three 
(|uarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that 
the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell 15 
tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour 
was passed; and, considering that he could no more go 
to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the wisest 
resolution in his power. 

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once 20 
convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, 
and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his 
listening ear. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“A quarter past,” said Scrooge, counting. 25 

“Ding, dong!” 

“Half-past!” said Scrooge. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“A quarter to it,” said Scrooge. 

“Ding, dong!” 30 

“The hour itself,” said Scrooge, triumphantly, “and 
nothing else!” 

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now 
did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy One. Light 
flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains 35 
of his bed were drawn. 


54 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by 
a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains 
at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. 
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, 
5 starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself 
face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them; 
as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the 
spirit at your elbow. 

It was a strange figure — like a child: yet not so like 
10 a child as like an old man, viewed through some super- 
natural medium, which gave him the appearance of having 
receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s 
proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and 
down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face 
15 had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on 
the skin. The arms w^ere very long and muscular; the 
hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. 
Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those 
upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest 
20 white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, 
the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of 
fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contra- 
diction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with 
summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, 
25 that from the crown of its head there sprang a bright clear 
jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was 
doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, 
a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under 
its arm. 

30 Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with 
increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For 
as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now 
in another, and what was light one instant, at another 
time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its dis- 
35 tinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one 
leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


55 


head, now a head without a body; of which dissolving 
parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom 
wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder 
of this, it would be itself again ; distinct and clear as 
ever. 5 

“Are you the Spirit, Sir, whose coming was foretold 
to me?” asked Scrooge. 

“I am!” 

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if 
instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance. 10 

“Who, and what are you?” Scrooge demanded. 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” 

“Long past?” inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarf- 
ish stature. 

“No. Your past.” 15 

Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, 
if anybody could have asked him; but he had a special 
desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be 
covered. 

“What!” exclaimed the Ghost, “would you so soon put 30 
out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not 
enough that you are one of those whose passions made 
this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to 
wear it low upon my brow!” 

Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend, 35 
or any knowledge of having wilfully “bonneted” the 
Spirit at any period of his life. He then made bold to 
inquire what business brought him there. 

“Your welfare!” said the Ghost. 

Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not 3 c 
help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have 
been more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have 
heard him thinking, for it said immediately: — 

“Your reclamation, then. Take heed!” 

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clas[)ed him 35 
genilv by the arm. 


56 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“Rise! and walk with me!” 

It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that 
the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian 
purposes; that bed was warm, and the thermometer a 
5 long way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly 
in his slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he 
had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though 
gentle as a woman’s hand, was not to be resisted. He rose : 
but finding that the Spirit made towards the window, 
10 clasped its robe in supplication. 

“I am a mortal,” Scrooge remonstrated, “and liable 
to fall.” 

“Bear but a touch of my hand there” said the Spirit, 
laying it upon his heart, “and you shall be upheld in more 
15 than this!” 

As the words were spoken, they passed through the w^all, 
and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either 
hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige 
of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had 
so vanished with it, for it w^as a clear, cold, winter day, with 
snow upon the ground. 

“Good Heaven!” said Scrooge, clasping his hands 
together, as he looked about him. “I was bred in this 
place. I was a boy here!” 

25 The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, 
though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still 
present to the old man’s sense of feeling. He was con- 
scious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one 
connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, 
30 and cares long, long forgotten ! 

“Your lip is trembling,” said the Ghost. “And what 
is that upon your cheek ?” 

Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his 
voice, that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead 
35 him where he would. 

“You recollect the way?” inquired the Spirit. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


57 


“Remember it!” cried Scrooge with fervour — “I could 
walk it blindfold.” 

“Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!’* 
observed the Ghost. “Let us go on.” 

They walked along the road; Scrooge recognizing every 
gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town ap- 
peared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and 
winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen 
trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who 
called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by 
farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted 
to each other, until the broad fields were so full of merry 
music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it. 

“These are but shadows of the things that have been,” 
said the Ghost. “They have no consciousness of us.” 

The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, 
Scrooge knew and named them every one. Why was 
he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them! Why did his 
cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they went past! 
Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give 
each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads 
and by-ways, for their several homes! What was merry 
Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! 
What good had it ever done to him ? 

“The school is not quite deserted,” said the Ghost. 
“A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there 
still.” 

Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed. 

They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, 
and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a 
little weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a 
bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken 
fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their 
walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and 
their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the 
stables; and the coach-houses and sheds were overrun 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient 
state, within; for entering the dreary hall, and glancing 
through the open doors of many rooms, they found them 
poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy 
5 savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which 
associated itself somehow with too much getting up by 
candle-light, and not too much to eat. 

They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to 
a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, 
10 and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer 
still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of 
these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and 
Scrooge sat down upon a form, and w'ept to see his poor 
forgotten self as he had used to be. 

15 Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle 
from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the 
half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a 
sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, 
not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door, no, 
20 not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge 
with softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his 
tears. 

The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his 
younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, 
36 in foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to 
look at: stood outside the window, with an axe stuck 
in his belt, and leading an ass laden with wood by the 
bridle. 

“Why, it’s Ali Baba!” Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. 
30 “It’s dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One 
Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was left here 
all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that. 
Poor boy! And Valentine,” said Scrooge, “and his wild 
orother, Orson; there they go! And what’s his name, 
35 who was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the Gate of 
Damascus; don’t you see him! And the Sultan’s Groom 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


turned upside down by the Ger ii; there he is upon his 
head! Serve him right. Tm glad of it. What business 
had he to be married to the Princess 1 ^’ 

To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his 
nature on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice 5 
between laughing and crying; and to see his heightened 
and excited face; would have been a surprise to his busi- 
ness friends in the City, indeed. 

“There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. “Green body 
and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out 10 
qf the top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, 
he called him, when he came home again after sailing 
round the island. ‘Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you 
been, Robin Crusoe?’ The man thought he was dream- 
ing, but he wasn’t. It was the Parrot, you know. There 13 
goes Friday, running for his life to the little creek ! Halloa ! 
Hoop! Halloo!’’ 

Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his 
usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, “Poor 
boy!’’ and cried again. 20 

“I wish,’’ Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his 
pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with 
his cuff: “but it’s too late now.’’ 

“What is the matter?’’ asked the Spirit. 

“Nqthing,’’ . said Scrooge. “Nothing. There was a 25 
boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. 

I should like to have given him something: that’s all.’’ 

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: 
saying as it did so, “Let us see another Christmas!’’ 

Scrooge’s former self grew larger at the words, and the so 
room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels 
shrank, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell 
out of the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; 
but how all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more 
than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that 35 
everything had happened so; that there he was, alone 


60 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


again, when all the other boys had gone home for the 
jolly holidays. 

He was not reading now, but walking up and down 
despairingly. Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a 
5 mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards 
the door. 

It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, 
came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and 
often kissing him, addressed him as her “Dear, dear 
10 brother.” 

“I have come to bring you home, dear brother!” sayi 
the child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to 
laugh. “To bring you home, home, home!” 

“Home, little Fan?” returned the boy. 

15 “Yes!” said the child, brimful of glee. “Home, for 
good and all. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so 
much kinder than he used to be, that home’s like Heaven! 
He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going 
to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you 
20 might come home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent 
me in a coach to bring you. And you’re to be a man!” 
said the child, opening her eyes, “and are never to come 
back here; but first, we’re to be together all the Christmas 
long, and have the merriest time in all the world.” 

25 “You are quite a woman, little Fan!” exclaimed the boy. 

She clajiped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch 
his head ; but being too little, laughed again, and stood on 
tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, 
in her childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, 
30 nothing loath to go, accompanied her. 

A terrible voice in the hall cried, “Bring down Master 
Scrooge’s box, there!” and in the hall appeared the school- 
master himself, who glared on Master Scrooge with a 
ferocious condescension, and threw him into a dreadful 
35 state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then 
conveyed him and his sister into the veriest old well of a 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


61 


shivering best-parlour that ever was seen, where the maps 
upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in 
the windows, were waxy with cold. Here he produced 
a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously 
heavy cake, and administered instalments of those dainties 
to the young people: at the same time, sending out a 
meagre servant to offer a glass of ‘^something’’ to the 
postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman, 
but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had 
rather not. Master Scrooge’s trunk being by this time 
tied on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the 
schoolmaster good-by right willingly; and getting into 
it, drove gayly down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels 
dashing the hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves 
of the evergreens like spray. 

“Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might 
have withered,” said the Ghost. “But she had a large 
heart!” 

“So she had,” cried Scrooge. “You’re right. I’ll not 
gainsay it. Spirit. God forbid!” 

“She died a woman,” said the Ghost, “and had, as I 
think, children.” 

“One child,” Scrooge returned. 

“True,” said the Ghost. “Your nephew!*’ 

Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered 
briefly, “Yes.” 

Although they had but that moment left the school 
behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of 
a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; 
where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and 
all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made 
plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too 
it was Christmas time again; but it was evening, and the 
streets were lighted up. 

The Ghost stopped at a certain w^arehouse door, and 
asked Scrooge if he knew it. 


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62 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“Know it!” said Scrooge. “Was I apprenticed here?” 

They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh 
wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been 
two inches taller he must have knocked his head against 
the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement: — 

“Why, it^s old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it’s Fezziwig 
alive again!” 

Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the 
clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed 
his hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed 
all over himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; 
and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice : — 

“Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!” 

Scrooge’s former self, now grown a young man, came 
briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-’prentice. 

“Dick Wilkins, to be sure!” said Scrooge to the Ghost. 
“Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached 
to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!” 

“Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “No more work 
to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! 
Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a 
sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can can say Jack 
Robinson!” 

You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it! 
They charged into the street with the shutters — one, two, 
three — had ’em up in their places — four, five, six — barred 
’em and pinned ’em — seven, eight, nine — and came back 
before you could have got to twelve, panting like race- 
horses. 

“Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the 
high desk, with wonderful agility. “Clear aw^ay, my lads, 
and let’s have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chir- 
rup, Ebenezer!” 

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have 
cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old 
Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


6S 

movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from 
public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, 
the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; 
and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and 
bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a 5 
winter’s night. 

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the 
lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like 
fifty stomach-aches. In came ]\Irs. Fezziwig, one vast 
substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, 10 
beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers 
whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and 
women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, 
with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her 
brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the 15 
boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having- 
board enough from his master; trying to hide himself 
behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved 
to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all 
came, one* after another; some shyly, some boldly, some 2Q 
gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; 
in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all 
went, twenty couple at once, hands half round and back 
again the other way; down the middle and up again; 
round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; 25 
old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new 
top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; 
all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them. 
When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clap- 
ping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, “Well done!” 30 
and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, 
especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest 
upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though 
there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been 
carried home, exhausted, on a shutter; and he were a 35 
bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish. 


64 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and 
more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, 
and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a 
great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, 
5 and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening 
came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an 
artful dog, mind ! The sort of man who knew his business 
better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up 
“Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then old Fezziwig stood out 
10 to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a 
good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and 
twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled 
with; people who would dance, and had no notion of 
walking. 

15 But if they had been twice as many: ah, four times: 
old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so 
would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be 
his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high 
jiraise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light 
20 appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone 
in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t 
have predicted, at any given timej what would become 
of ’em next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig 
had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, hold 
25 hands with your partner; bow and courtesy; corkscrew; 
thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezzi- 
wig “cut” — cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with 
his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger. 

When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke 
30 up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on 
cither side the door, and shaking hands with every person 
individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a 
Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the 
two ’prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the 
35 cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their 
beds; which were under a counter in the back-shop. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


65 


During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a 
man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, 
and with his former self. He corroborated everything, 
remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and under- 
went the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when 
the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned 
from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became 
conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the 
light upon its head burnt very clear. 

“A small matter,” said the Ghost, “to make these silly 
folks so full of gratitude.” 

“Small!” echoed Scrooge. 

The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, 
who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: 
and when he had done so, said, 

“Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of 
your mortal money: three or four, perhaps. Is that, so 
much that he deserves this praise?” 

“It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, 
and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, 
self. “It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render 
us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burden- 
some; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in 
words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that 
it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? 
The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a 
fortune.” 

He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped. 

“What is the matter?” asked the Ghost. 

“Nothing particular,” said Scrooge. 

“Something, I think?” the Ghost insisted. 

“No,” said Scrooge, “No. I should like to be able to 
say a word or two to my clerk just now! That’s all.” 

His former self turned down the lamps as he gave 
utterance to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again 
stood side by side in the open air. 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“My time grows short/’ observed the Spirit. “Quick I” 

This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom 
he could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For 
again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man 
in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid 
lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs 
of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless 
motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had 
taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree • 
would fall. 

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young 
girl in a mourning-dress : in whose eyes there were tears, 
which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of 
Christmas Past. 

“It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very 
little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer 
and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to - 
do, I have no just cause to grieve.” 

“What idol has displaced you?” he rejoined. 

“A golden one.” 

“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he 
said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; 
and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such 
severity as the pursuit of wealth!” 

“You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. 
“All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being 
beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen 
your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master- 
passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?” 

“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have grown so 
much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards 
you.” 

She shook her head. 

“Am I?” 

“Our contract is an old one. It was made when we 
were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


67 


we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient 
industry. You are changed. When it was made, you 
were another man.” 

“I was a boy,” he said impatiently. 

^‘Your own feeling tells you that you were not what 5 
you are,” she returned. “I am. That which promised 
happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with 
misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly 
I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that 
I have thought of it, and can release you.” lo 

^‘Have I ever sought release ?” 

“In words ? No. Never.” 

“In what, then?” 

“In a changed natul*e; in an altered spirit; in another 
atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In is 
everything that made my love of any worth or value in 
your sight. If this had never been between us,” said the 
girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell 
me, would you seek me out and try to win me now ? Ah, 
no !” 20 

He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in 
spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You 
think not.” 

“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered, 
“Heaven knows! When 7 have learned a Truth like this, 25 
I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you 
were free to-day, to-morrow^, yesterday, can even I believe 
that you would choose a dowerless girl — you who, in your 
very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain; or, 
choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your so 
one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your re- 
pentance and regret would surely follow* ? I do ; and I re- 
lease you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once 
w-ere.” 

He w^as about to speak; but with her head turned from 35 
him, she resumed. 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“You may — the memory of what is past half makes | 
me hope you will — have pain in this. A very, very brief i 
time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, I 
as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well I 
that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have | 
chosen !” 

She left him, and they parted. 

•“Spirit!” said Scrooge, “show me no more! Conduct 
me home. Why do you delight to torture me ?” 

“One shadow more !” exclaimed the Ghost. 

“No more !” cried Scrooge. “No more. I don’t wish to ^ 
see it . Show me no more !” 

But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, 
and forced him to observe what happened next. 

They were in another scene and place; a room, not very 
large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the win- > 
ter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like the last that Scrooge 
believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely . 
matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this 
room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more chil- 
dren there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could 
count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they 
were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but 
every child was conducting itself like forty. The conse- 
quences were uproarious beyond belief ; but no one seemed 
to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed 
heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon be- 
ginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young 
brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to 
be one of them ! Though I never could have been so rude, 
no, no! I wouldn’t for the wealth of all the world have 
crushed that braided hair, and torn it down; and for the 
precious little shoe, I wouldn’t have plucked it off, God 
bless my soul ! to save my life. As to measuring her waist in 
sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn’t have done 
it; I should have expected my arm to have grown round it 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


09 


for a punishment, and never come straight again. And yet 
I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; 
to have questioned her, that she might have opened them ; 
to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and 
never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an 
inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I 
should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest 
license of a child, and yet been man enough to know its 
value. 

But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a 
rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and 
plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed 
and boisterous group just in time to greet the father, who 
came home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys 
and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and 
the onslaught that was made on the defenseless porter! 
The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his pock- 
ets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by 
his cravat, hug him round the neck, pommel his back, and 
kick his legs in irrepressible affection I The shouts of won- 
der and delight with which the development of every pack- 
age was received! The terrible announcement that the 
baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll’s frying- 
pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having 
swallowed a fictitious turkqy, glued on a wooden platter! 
The immense relief of finding this a false alarm ! The joy, 
and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable 
alike. It is enough that by degrees the children and their 
emotions got out of the parlour and by one stair at a time, 
up to the top of the house; where they went to bed, and so 
subsided. 

And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, 
when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning 
fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his own 
fireside; and when he thought that such another creature, 
quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have called 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard winter of 
his life, his sight grew very dim indeed. 

‘'Belle,'' said the husband, turning to his wife with a 
smile, “I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon." 

5 “Who was it?" 

“Guess!" 

“How can I? Tut, don’t I know?” she added in the 
same breath, laughing as he laughed. “Mr. Scrooge." 

“Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and 
10 as it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could 
scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point 
of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the 
world, I do believe." 

“Spirit!” said Scrooge in a broken voice, “remove me 
15 from this place." 

“I told you these were shadows of the things that have 
been,” said the Ghost. “That they are what they are, do 
not blame me!” 

“Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed, “I cannot bear it!" 

20 He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon 
him with a face, in which in some strange way there were 
fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with 
it. 

“Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!" 

35 In the struggle, if that can bf called a struggle in which 
the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was un- 
disturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed 
that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly con- 
necting that with its influence over him, he seized the extin- 
30 guisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon 
his head. 

The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher 
covered its whole form ; but though Scrooge pressed it down 
with all his force, he could not hide the light which streamed 
35 from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground. 

He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


71 


an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own 
bedroom. He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which 
his hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before 
he sank into a heavy slumber. 


STAVE THREE 


THE SECOND OF THE THHEE SPIRITS 

Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, 
and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge 
had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the 
stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to conscious- 
5 ness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of 
holding a conference with the second messenger despatched 
to him through Jacob Marley’s intervention. But, finding 
that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to won- 
der which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, 
10 he put them every one aside with his own hands, and lying 
down again, established a sharp lookout all round the bed. 
For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its 
appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise and 
made nervous. 

15 Gentleman of the free-and-easy sort, who plume them- 
selves on being acquainted with a move or two, and begin 
usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of 
their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good 
for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between 
20 which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably 
wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without ven- 
turing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don’t mind call- 
ing on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad 
field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a 
25 baby and rhinoceros would have astonished him very 
much. 

Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by 
any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


73 


the Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken 
with a violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, 
a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this 
time, he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a 
blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock 6 
proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more 
alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make 
out what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes 
apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an 
interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having lo 
the consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he began 
to think — as you or I would have thought at first; for it is 
always the person not in the predicament who knows what 
ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably 
have done it too— at last, I say, he began to think that the 15 
source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoin- 
ing room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed 
to shine. This idea taking full possession of his mind, he 
got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door. 

The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock, a strange 20 
voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He 
obeyed. 

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. 
But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The 
walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it 25 
looked a perfect grove, from every part of which, bright 
gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, 
mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many 
little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty 
blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petri- 30 
faction of a hearth had never known in Scrooge’s time, or 
Marley’s, or for many and many a winter season gone. 
Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were 
turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, 
sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum- 35 
puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry- 


74 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense 
twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the 
chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state 
upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; 

5 who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s 
horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, 
as he came peeping round the door. 

“Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in! and know 
me better, man!” 

10 Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this 
Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been ; and 
though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not like 
to meet them. 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. 
15 “Look upon me!” 

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple 
deep green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. 
This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capa- 
cious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or con- 
20 cealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the 
ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head 
it wore no other covering than a holly wreath set here and 
there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long 
and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open 
25 hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and 
its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique 
scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath 
was eaten up with rust. 

“You have never seen the like of me before!” exclaimed 
50 the Spirit. 

“Never,” Scrooge made answer to it. 

“Have never walked forth with the younger members of 
my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder 
brothers born in these later years ?” pursued the Phantom. 

“I don’t think I have,” said Scrooge. '‘I am afraid 
I have not. Have you had many brothers. Spirit?” 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


75 


"‘More than eighteen hundred,” said the Ghost. 

“A tremendous family to provide for!” muttered 
Scrooge. 

The Ghost of Christmas Present rose. 

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, submissively, “conduct me where 5 
you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I 
learnt a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you 
have aught to teach me, let me profit by it.” 

“Touch my robe!” 

Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast, lo 

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, 
poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, pud- 
dings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the 
room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they 
stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for 15 
the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk 
and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow 
from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the 
tops of their houses: whence it was mad delight to the 
boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, 20 
and splitting into artificial little snow-storms. 

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows 
blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow 
upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground ; 
which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows 25 
by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons; furrows that 
crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where 
the great streets branched off, and made intricate channels, 
hard to trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The 
sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up 3 c 
with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier 
particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all 
the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, 
caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts’ 
content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate 35 
or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad 


76 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun 
might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain. 

For, the people who were shovelling away on the house- 
tops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another 
5 from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a face- 
tious snow-ball — better-natured missile far than many a 
wordy jest — laughing heartily if it went right and not less 
heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers^ shops were still 
half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. 
10 There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, 
shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling 
at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their 
apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, 
broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of 
15 their growth like Spanish Friars; and winking from their 
shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and 
glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were 
pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; 
there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ 
20 benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that 
people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there 
were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their 
fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant 
shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves ; there were 
95 Norfolk Biffins, squab, and swarthy, setting off the yellow 
of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of 
their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching 
to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. 
The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice 
30 fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant- 
blooded race, appeared to know that there was something 
going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round 
their little world in slow and passionless excitement. 

The Grocers’ ! oh the Grocers’ ! nearly closed, with 
35 perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those 
gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


77 


descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that 
the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the 
canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, 
or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so 
grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plenti- 5 
ful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks 
of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so 
delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with 
molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint 
and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were 10 
moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in 
modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or 
that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress : 
but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the 
hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against 15 
each other at the door, clashing their wicker baskets wildly, 
and left their purchases upon the counter, and came 
running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds 
of the like mistakes in the best humour possible; while the 
Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the ,20 
polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons 
behind might have been their own, worn outside for general 
inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose. 

But soon the steeples called good people all, to church 
and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the 25 
streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. 
And at the same time there emerged from scores of by- 
streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, 
carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight 
of these poor revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very 30 
much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker’s 
doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers passed, 
sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And 
it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice 
when there were angry words between some dinner- 35 
carriers who had jostled with each other, he shed a few 


78 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


drops of water on them from it, and their good humour 
was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to 
quarrel upon Christmas Day. x\nd so it was! God love 
it, so it was! 

5 In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; 
and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these 
dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed 
blotch of wet above each bakeFs oven; where the pave- 
ment smoked as if its stones were cooking too. 

10 “Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from 
your torch?” asked Scrooge. 

“There is. My own.” 

“Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” 
asked Scrooge. 

15 “To any kindly given. To a poor one most.” 

“Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge. 

“Because it needs it most.” 

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, “I 
wonder you, of all th6 beings in the many worlds about 
20 us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities 
of innocent enjoyment.” 

“H” cried the Spirit. 

“You would deprive them of their means of dining 
every seventh day, often the only day on which they can 
25 be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge. “Wouldn’t you?” 

“I!” cried the spirit. 

“You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?” 
said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same thing.” 

“I seek!” exclaimed the Spirit. 

30 “Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in 
your name, or at least in that of your family,” said 
Scrooge. 

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned 
the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their 
85 deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and 
selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


79 


our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember 
that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.” 

Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on, 
invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the 
town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which 
Scrooge had observed at the baker’s), that notwithstanding 
his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any 
place with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof 
quite as graceiully and lik^ a supernatural creature, as 
it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall. 

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in 
showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind, 
generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor 
men, that led him straight to Scrooge’s clerk’s; for there 
he went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; 
and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and 
stopped to bless Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the sprin- 
klings of his torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen 
“Bob” a-week himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but 
fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost 
of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house! 

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed 
out but poorly in a twice- turned gown, but brave in ribbons, 
which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; 
and she laid the clotR assisted by Belinda Cratchit, 
second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while 
Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan 
of potatoes, and getting the corners of his monstrous shirt 
collar (Bob’s private property, conferred upon his son 
and heir in honour of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced 
to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to show 
his linen in the fashionable Parks. And now two smaller 
Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that 
outside the baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known 
it for their own; and basking in luxurious thoughts of 
sage-ahd-onion, these young Cratchits danced about the 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, 
while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked 
him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up, 
knocked loudly at the saueepan-lid to be let out and 
peeled. 

“What has ever got your precious father then ?” said Mrs. 
Cratchit. “And your brother. Tiny Tim! And Martha 
warn’t as late last Christmas Day by half-an-hourl’^ 

“Here’s Martha, mother!” said a girl, appearing as she 
spoke. 

“Here’s Martha, mother!” cried the two young Cratchits. 
‘ ‘ Hurrah ! There’ s such a goose, Martha !’ ’ 

“Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are !” 
said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking 
off her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal. 

“We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,” replied the 
girl, “and had to clear away this morning , mother!” 

“Well! Never mind so long as you are come,” said Mrs. 
Cratchit. “Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have 
a warm. Lord bless ye !” 

“No, no! There’s father coming,” cried the two young 
Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. “Hide, Martha, 
hide!” 

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, 
with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, 
hanging down before him ; and his threadbare clothes darn- 
ed up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim 
upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little 
crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame ! 

“Why, where’s our Martha?” cried Bob Cratchit, look- 
ing round. 

“Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“Not coming!” said Bob, with a sudden declension in his 
high spirits; for he had been Tim’s blood horse all the way 
from church, and had come home rampant. “Not com- 
ing upon Christmas Day !” 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


81 


Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if it were only 
in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the 
closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young 
Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash- 
house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the cop- 
per. 

“And how did little Tim behave ?” asked Mrs. Cratchit, 
when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had 
hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. 

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he 
gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the 
strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, 
that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he 
was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remem- 
ber upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk 
and blind men see.” 

Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and 
trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing 
strong and hearty. 

His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and 
back came Tiny Tim before another w^ord was spoken, 
escorted by his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; 
and while Bob, turning up his cuffs — as if, poor fellow, they 
were capable of being made more shabby — compounded 
some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred 
it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Mas- 
ter Peter, and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to 
fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high pro- 
cession. 

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a 
goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to 
Avhich a black swan was a matter of course — and in truth it 
was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit 
made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) 
hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incred- 
ible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; 


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Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside 
him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Crat- 
chits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, 
and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons 
5 into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before 
their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were 
set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a 
breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along 
the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but 
10 when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing 
issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all around the 
board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Crat- 
chits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and 
feebly cried Hurrah ! 

15 There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t be- 
lieve there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness 
and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of uni- 
versal admiration. Eked out by the apple-sauce and 
mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole 
20 family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said wdth great delight 
(surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they 
hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, 
and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in 
sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates 
25 being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the 
room alone — too nervous to bear witnesses — to take the 
pudding up and bring it in. 

Suppose it should not be be done enough! Suppose it 
should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should 
30 have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while 
they were merry with the goose — a supposition at which 
the tvro young Cratchits became livid ! All sorts of horrors 
were supposed. 

Hallo ! A great deal of steam ! The pudding was out of 
35 the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the 
cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


83 


next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to 
that! That was the pudding! In. half a minute Mrs. 
Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the 
pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, 
blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and 
bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. 

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and 
calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success 
achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. 
Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she 
would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity 
of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but 
nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding 
for a large family. It would have been flat heresy 
to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at 
such a thing. 

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the 
hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in 
the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and 
oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chest- 
nuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew around 
the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning 
half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family dis- 
play of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a 
handle. 

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as 
golden goblets would have done ; and Bob served it out with 
beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered 
and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed : — 

“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us !” 

Which all the family re-echoed. 

^‘God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all. 

He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool. 
Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the 
child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that 
he might be taken from him. 


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“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt 
before, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live.” 

“I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in the poor 
chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully 
5 preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the 
Future, the child will die.” 

“No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he 
will be spared.” 

“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none 
10 other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find him here. 
What then ? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and 
decrease the surplus population.” 

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by 
the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief. 

15 “Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not 
adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discov- 
ered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide 
what men shall live, what men shall die ? It may be, that 
in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit 
20 to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh, God! 
to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much 
life among his hungry brothers in the dust!” 

Scrooge bent before the Ghost’s rebuke, and trembling 
cast his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speed- 
25 ily, on hearing his own name. 

“Mr. Scrooge!” said Bob; “I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, the 
Founder of the Feast !” 

“The Founder of the Feast indeed!” cried Mrs. Cratchit, 
reddening. “I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece 
80 of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good ap- 
petite for it.” 

“My dear,” said Bob, “the children! Christmas Day.” 

“It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said she, “on 
which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, 
35 unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! 
Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!” 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


85 


“My dear,” was Bob’s mild answer, “Christmas Day.” 

“I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s,” said 
Mrs. Cratchit, “not for his. Long life to him! A Merry 
Christmas and a Happy New Year! He’ll be very merry 
and happy, I have no doubt !” 5 

The children drank the toast after her. It was the first 
of their proceedings which had no heartiness in it. Tiny 
Tim drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it. 
Scrooge was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his 
name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not dis- lo 
pelled for full five minutes. 

After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier 
than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful be- 
ing done with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situa- 
tion in his eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if 15 
obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young 
Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter’s being 
a man of business; and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at 
the fire from between his collars, as if he were deliberating 
what particular investments he should favour when he 20 
came into the receipt of that bewildering income. Martha, 
who was a poor apprentice at a milliner’s, then told them 
what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she 
worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie abed to-mor- 
row morning for a good long rest; to-morrow being a holi- 25 
day she passed at home. Also how she had seen a countess 
and a lord some days before, and how the lord “was much 
about as tall as Peter;” at which Peter pulled up his collars 
so high that you couldn’t have seen his head if you had 
been there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went 30 
round and round; and by-and-by they had a song about a 
lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had 
a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed. 

There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not 
a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes 35 
were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty; 


86 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside 
of a pawnbroker’s. But, they were happy, grateful, 
pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and 
when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright 
5 sprinklings of the Spirit’s torch at parting, Scrooge had his 
eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last. 

By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty 
heavily ; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, 
the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, 
10 and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering 
of, the blaze showed preparations for a cozy dinner, 
with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, 
and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold 
and darkness. There, all the children of the house were 
15 running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, 
brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet 
them. Here, again, were shadows on the window-blind 
of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome girls, 
all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, 
30 tripped lightly off to some near neighbour’s house; where 
woe upon the single man who saw them enter — artful 
witches I well they knew it — in a glow ! 

But if you had judged from the numbers of people on 
their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought 
25 that no one was at home to give them welcome when they 
got there, instead of every house expecting company, and 
piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, 
how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of 
breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on 
30 outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless 
mirth, on everything within its reach! The very lamp- 
lighter, who ran on before dotting the dusky street with 
specks of light, and who w’as dressed to spend the evening 
somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed : though 
35 little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company 
but Christmas ! 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


87 


And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, 
they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where mon- 
strous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it 
were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself 
wheresoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the 
frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and 
furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the 
setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon 
the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frown- 
ing lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of 
darkest night. 

“What place is this ?” asked Scrooge. 

“A place where Miners live who labour in the bowels of 
the earth,” returned the Spirit. “But they know me. 
See !” 

A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly 
they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of 
mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled 
round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with 
their children and their children’s children, and another 
generation beyond that, all decked out gayly in their 
holiday attire. The old man in a voice that seldom rose 
above the howling of the ^\dnd upon the barren waste, was 
singing them a Christmas song; it had been a very old 
song when he was a boy; and from time to time they all 
joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, 
the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as 
they stopped, his vigour sank again. 

The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his 
robe, and passing on above the moor, sped whither? 
Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, 
he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, 
behind them ; and his ears were deafened by the thundering 
of water, as it roiled, and roared, and raged among the 
dreadful caverns it had worn and fiercely tried to under- 
mine the earth. 


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Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some Ica^ijue 
or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, : 
the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. 
Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds ' 
5 — born of the wind one might suppose as seaweed of the 
water — rose and fell about it, like the Avaves they skimmed. 

But even here, two men who watched the light had made 
a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall 
shed out a ray of brightness on the aAvful sea. Joining , 
10 their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, 
they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of 
grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all 
damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure 
head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song 
15 that was like a Gale in itself. 

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving 
sea — on, on — until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, 
from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside ■ 
the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the ' 
so ofiicers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their • 
several stations; but every man among them hummed a 
a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke I 
below his breath to his companion of some by-gone i 
Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. ;■ 
25 And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, >' j 
had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any ^ 
day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its fes- 
tivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a dis- 
tance, and had known that they delighted to remember him. Jj 
30 It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the 1:1 
moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing J 
it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an | 
unknown abyss, whose depths Avere secrets as profound | 
Death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus f 
35 engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater | 
surprise to Scrooge to recognize it as his own nepheAv's and | 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the 
Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that 
same nephew with approving affability. 

“Ha, ha!” laughed Scrooge’s nephew. “Ha, ha, ha!” 

If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know 5 
a man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew% all 
I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce 
him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance. 

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, 
that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there 10 
is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter 
and good-humour. When Scrooge’s nephew laughed 
in this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and 
twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions: 
Scrooge’s niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. 15 
And their assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, 
roared out lustily. 

“Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!” 

“He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!” 
cried Scrooge’s nephew. “He believed it too!” 20 

“More shame for him, Fred!” said Scrooge’s niece, 
indignantly. Bless those women; they never do any- 
thing by halves. They are always in earnest. 

She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a 
dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little 25 
mouth, that seemed made to be kissed — as no doubt it 
was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that 
melted into one another when she laughed; and the sun- 
niest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature’s 
head. Altogether she was what you would have called 3 o 
provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly 
satisfactory ! 

“He’s a comical old fellow,” said Scrooge’s nephew^ 
“that’s the truth; and not so pleasant as he might be. 
However, his offences carry their own punishment, and 35 
I have nothing to say against him.” 


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*‘rm sure he is very rich, Fred,” hinted Scrooge^s niece. 
*‘At least you always tell 7fie so.” 

“What of that, my dear!” said Scrooge’s nephew. 
“His wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good 
with it. He don’t make himself comfortable with it. 
He hasn’t the satisfaction of thinking — ha, ha, ha! — that 
he is ever going to benefit Us with it.” 

“I have no patience with him,” observed Scrooge’s 
niece. Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, and all the other ladies, 
expressed the same opinion. 

“Oh, I have!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “I am sorry 
for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who 
suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always. Here, he 
takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won’t come and 
dine with us. What’s the consequence? He don’t lose 
much of a dinner.” 

“Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,” inter- 
rupted Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else said the same, 
and they must be allowed to have been competent judges, 
because they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert 
upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by lamp 
light. 

“Well! I’m very glad to hear it,” said Scrooge’s nephew, 
“because I haven’t any great faith in these young house- 
keepers. What do ^ou say. Topper?” 

Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge’s ! 
niece’s sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a | 
wretched outcast, who had no right to express an opinion | 
on the subject. Whereat Scrooge’s niece’s sister — the | 
plump one with the lace tucker: not the one with the roses i 
— blushed. 

“Do go on,' Fred,” said Scrooge’s niece, clapping her > 
hands. “He never finishes what he begins to say! He 
is such a ridiculous fellow!” » 

Scrooge’s nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it 
was impossible to keep the infection off; though the Ji 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


91 


plump sister tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar;, 
his example was unanimously followed. 

“I was only going to say/' said Scrooge's nephew, 
“that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and 
not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some 
pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am 
sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in 
his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his 
dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance 
every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He 
may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking 
better of it — I defy him — if he finds me going there, in 
good temper, year after year, and saying ‘Uncle Scrooge,- 
how are you ?' If it only puts him in the vein to leave his 
poor clerk fifty pounds, that’s something; and I think I 
shook him yesterday." 

It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking 
Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not 
much caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed 
at any rate, he encouraged them in their merriment, and 
passed the bottle joyously. 

After tea, they had some music. For they were a 
musical family, and knev/ what they were about, when 
they sang a Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially 
Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good one, 
and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red 
in the face over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the 
harp; and played among other tunes a simple little air 
(a mere nothing: you might learn to whistle it in two 
minutes), w^hich had been familiar to the child who 
fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as he had been 
reminded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When this 
strain of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had 
shown him, came upon his mind; he softened more and 
more; and thought that if he could have listened to it 
often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses 


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of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without 
resorting to the sexton’s spade that buried Jacob Marley. 

But they didn’t devote the 'whole evening to music. 
After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be 
5 children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, 
when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! 
There was first a game at blind-man’s buff. Of course 
there was. And I no more believe Topper was really 
blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion 
10 is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge’s 
nephew: and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew 
it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace 
tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. 
Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, 
15 bumping up against the piano, smothering himself among 
the curtains, w'herever she w^ent, there went he. He 
always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn’t 
catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him, 
as some of them did, and stood there; he would have 
20 made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would 
have been an affront to your understanding; and would 
instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump 
sister. She often cried out that it wasn’t fair; and it 
really was not. But when at last, he caught her; when, 
25 in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings 
past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no 
escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For 
his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was 
necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure 
30 himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her 
finger, and a certain chain about her neck; w'as vile, 
monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it, 
when, another blind man being in office, they were so 
very confidential together, behind the curtains. 

35 Scrooge’s niece was not one of the blind-man’s buff 
party, but was made comfortable 'with a large chair and 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


93 


a footstool, In a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge 
were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and 
loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the 
alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and 
Where, she was very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge’s 
nephew, beat her sisters hollow: though they were sharp 
girls too, as Topper could have told you. There might 
have been twenty people there, young and old, but they 
all played, and so did Scrooge; for, wholly forgetting in 
the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice 
made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with 
his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, 
too; for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted 
not to cut in the eye was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt 
as he took it in his head to be. 

The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood 
and looked upon him with such favour that he begged 
like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. 
But this the Spirit said could not be done. 

“Here is a new game,” said Scrooge. “One half-hour. 
Spirit, only one!” 

It is a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew 
had to think of something, and the rest must find out what ; 
he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case 
was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was ex- 
posed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, 
a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal 
an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked 
sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the 
streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by 
anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never 
killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, 
or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a beaL. 
At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew 
burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly 
tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and 


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Stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar 
state, cried out: — 

“I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred 1 I know j 
what it is r’ 1 

5 “What is it ?” cried Fred. 

“It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge 1” ^ 

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal 
sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a 
bear?” ought to have been “Yes;” inasmuch as an an- 
10 sw'er in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their 
thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had 
any tendency that way. 

“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said 
Fred, “and it w'ould be ungrateful not to drink his health. 

15 Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the 
moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge 1’ ” 

“Well I Uncle Scrooge!” they cried. 

“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old 
man, whatever he is !” said Scrooge’s nephew\ “He would- 
20 n’t take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. 
Uncle Scrooge!” 

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and 
light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious 
company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible 
25 speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole 
scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his 
nephew ; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels. 

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they 
visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood 
30 beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, 
and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they > 
were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was ' 
rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every ‘ 
refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had \ 
35 not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left 
his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts. 


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It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge 
had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays 
appeared to be condensed into the space of time they 
passed together. It was, strange, too, that while Scrooge 
remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew 
older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, 
but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth 
Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood 
together in an open place, he noticed that its hair w^as gray. 

“Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge. 

“My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the 
Ghost. “It ends to-night.” 

“To-night!” cried Scrooge. 

“To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing 
near.” 

The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven 
at that moment. 

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said 
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see 
something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protrud- 
ing from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw ?” 

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” 
was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.” 

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; 
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They 
knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its 
garment. 

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” ex- 
claimed the Ghost. 

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, 
scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. 
Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, 
and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriv- 
elled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them 
and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have 
sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. 


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No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in 
any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, 
has monsters half so horrible and dread. 

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown 
5 to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, 
but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to 
a lie of such enormous magnitude. 

“Spirit 1 are they yours ?” Scrooge could say no more. 

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon 
10 them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their 
fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Be- 
ware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all 
beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which 
is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried 
15 the Spirit, stretching out its hand toward the city. “Slan- 
der those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious pur- 
poses, and make it worse! And bide the end!” 

“Have they no refuge or resource ?” cried Scrooge. 

“Are there no prisons ?” said the Spirit, turning on him 
30 for the last time with his own words. “ Are there no work- 
houses?” 

The bell struck twelve. 

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. 
As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the 
25 prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, 
beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, 
like a mist along the ground, towards him. 


STAVE FOUR 


THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS 

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. 
When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; 
for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it 
seemed to scatter gloom and mystery. 

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which con- 
cealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it vis- 
ible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would 
have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and 
separate it from the darkness by which it was sur- 
rounded. 

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside 
him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a 
solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither 
.spoke nor moved. 

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To 
Come ?” said Scrooge. 

The Spirit answered not, but pointed downward with its 
hand. 

“You are about to show me shadows of the things that 
have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” 
Scrooge pursued. “Is that .so. Spirit ?” 

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an 
instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. 
That was the only answer he received. 

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, 
Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trem- 
bled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand 
when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a 

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moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to 
recover. 

But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him 
with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the 
dusky shroud there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon 
him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost 
could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap 
of black. 

“Ghost of the Future 1” he exclaimed, “I fear you more 
than any Spectre I have seen. But, as I know your 
])urpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be an- 
other man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you 
company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not 
speak to me?” 

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight 
before them. 

“Lead on!” said Scrooge. “Lead on! The night is 
waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead 
on. Spirit!” 

The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him. 
Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him 
up, he thought, and carried him along. 

They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather 
seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of 
its own act. But there they were, in the heart of it; on 
’Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and 
down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and con- 
versed in groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled 
thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as 
Scrooge had seen them often. 

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. 
Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge 
advanced to listen to their talk. 

. “No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, “I 
don’t know much about it, either way. I only know he’s 
dead.” 


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99 


^‘When did he die inquired another. 

“Last night, I believe.” 

“Why, what was the matter with him ?” asked a third, 
taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. 
“I thought he’d never die.” 

“God- knows,” said the first, with a yawn. 

“What has he done with his money?” asked a red-faced 
gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his 
nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock. 

“I haven’t heard,” said the man with the large chin, 
yawning again. “Left it to his Company, perhaps. He 
hasn’t left it to me. That’s all I know.” 

This pleasantry was received with a general laugh. 

“It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the 
same speaker; “for upon my life I don’t know of 
anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and 
volunteer ?” 

“I don’t mind going if a lunch is provided,” observed the 
gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. “But I must 
be fed, if I make one.” 

Another laugh. 

“Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,” 
said the first speaker, “for I never wear black gloves, and I 
never eat lunch. But I’ll offer to go, if anybody else will. 
When I come to think of it. I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t 
his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak 
whenever we met. Bye, bye !” 

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with 
other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked toward 
the Spirit for an explanation. 

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed 
to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking 
that the explanation might lie here. 

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of 
business: very wealthy, and of great importance. He had 
made a point always of standing well in their esteem : in 

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a business point of view, that is; strictly in a business | 
point of view. I 

“How are you ?” said one. I 

“How are you ?” returned the other. 

^ “Weill” said the first. “Old Scratch has got his own at . j 
last, hey ?” i 

“So I am told,” returned the second. “Cold, isn’t it V* 
“Seasonable for Christmas time. You’re not a skater, 

I suppose ?” 

“No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning !” 

Not another word. That was their greeting, their con- 
versation, and their parting. 

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the 
Spirit should attach importance to conversations ajipar- 
15 ently so trivial; but feeling assured that they must have , j 
some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what it i 
was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to have 
any bearing, on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for 
that was Past, and this Ghost’s province was the Future. 

20 Nor could he think of any one immediately connected with 
himself, to whom he could apply them. But nothing 
doubting that to whomsoever they applied they had some 
latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to 
treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; i 

25 and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it • 

appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of 
his future self would give him the clew he missed, and 
would render the solution of these riddles easy. 

He looked about in that very place for his own image ; 

30 but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and J 
though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being | 
there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes t 
that poured in through the Porch. It gave him little sur- 
prise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a 4 
35 change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new- 
born resolutions carried out in this. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


101 


Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its 
outstretched hand. When he aroused himself from his 
thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and 
its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes 
were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and 5 
feel very cold. 

They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part 
of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, 
although he recognized its situation, and its bad repute. 
The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses 10 
wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. 
Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged 
their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the strag- 
gling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, 
with filth, and misery. 15 

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low- 
browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where 
iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were 
bought. Upon the floor within, were piled up heaps of 
rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and 20 
refuse iron of all lands. Secrets that few would like to 
scrutinize were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly 
rags, masses of corrupt fat, and sepulchres of bones. 
Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal- 
stove, made of old bricks, was a gray-haired rascal, nearly 25 
seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the 
cold air without, by a frowzy curtaining of miscellaneous 
tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the 
luxury of calm retirement. 

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of 30 
this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into 
the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another 
woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely 
followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled 
by the sight of them, than they had been upon the recogni- 35- 
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ishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined 5 
them, they all three burst into a laugh. ( 

“Let the charwoman alone to be the first T' cried she : 
who had entered first. “Let the laundress alone to be 
5 the second; and let the undertaker’s man alone to be the i 

third. Look here, old Joe, here’s a chance! If we ; 

haven’t all three met here without meaning it!” j 

“You couldn’t have met in a better place,” said old Joe, | 

removing his pipe from his mouth. “Come into the par- 
10 lour. You were made free of it long ago, you know; and 
the other two an’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door of 
the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an’t such a rusty | 
bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and 
I’m sure there’s no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! 

15 We’re all suitable to our calling, we’re well matched. 
Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour.” 

The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. 
The old man raked the fire together with an old stair- 
rod and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it 
20 was night) with the stem of his pipe, put it in his 
mouth again. 

While he did this, the woman who had already spoken 
threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting 
manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and 
25 looking \\[ith a bold defiance at the other two. 

“What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said 
the woman. “Every person has a right to take care of 
themselves. He always did!” 

“That’s true, indeed!” said the laundress. “No man 
50 more so.” 

“Why, then, don’t stand staring as if you was afraid, 
woman; who’s the wiser? We’re not going to pick holes 
in each other’s coats, I suppose?” 

“No, indeed!” said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. 

55 “We should hope not.” 

“Very well, then!” cried the woman. “That’s enough. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


103 


^^ho’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? 
Not a dead man, I suppose.” 

“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing. 

“If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, a wicked 
old screw,” pursued the woman, “why wasn’t he natural 
in his lifetime ? If he had been, he’d hafe had somebody 
to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead 
of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.” 

“It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,” said INIrs. Dil- 
ber. “It’s a judgment on him.” 

“I wish it was a little heavier one,” replied the woman; 
“and it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I 
could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that 
bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak 
out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for 
them to see it. We knew pretty well that we were helping 
ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It’s no sin. 
Open the bundle, Joe.” 

But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; 
and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, 
produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or 
two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch 
of no great value, were all. They were severally examined 
and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was 
disposed to give for each, upon the wall, and added them 
up into a total when he found there was nothing more 
to come. 

“That’s your account,” said Joe, “and I wouldn’t give 
another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it. 
Who’s next?” 

]\Irs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wear- 
ing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair 
of sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated 
on the wall in the same manner. 

“I always give too much to ladies. It’s a weakness of 
mine, and that’s the way I ruin myself,” said old Joe. 


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“That’s your account. If you asked me for another 
penny, and made it an open question, I’d repent of being 
so liberal and knock off half-a-crown.” 

“And now undo my bundle, Joe,” said the first woman. 

5 Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience 
of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, 
dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff. 

“What do you call this?” said Joe. “Bed-curtains!” 

“Ah!” returned the woman, laughing and leaning for- 
10 ward on her crossed arms. “Bed-curtains I” 

“You don’t mean to say you took ’em down, rings and 
all, with him lying there?” said Joe. 

“Yes I do,” replied the woman. “Why not?” 

“You were born to make your fortune,” said Joe, “and 
15 you’ll certainly do it.” 

“I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can get any- 
thing in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man 
as He was, I promise you, Joe,” returned the woman, 
coolly. “Don’t drop that oil upon the blankets, now.” 
20 “His blankets?” asked Joe. 

“Whose else’s do you think?” replied the woman. “He 
isn’t likely to take cold without ’em, I dare say.” 

“I hope he didn’t die of anything catching? Eh?” 
said old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up. 

25 “Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the woman. 
“I an’t so fond of his company that I’d loiter about him 
for such things, if he did. Ah! you may look through 
that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won’t find a 
hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It’s the best he 
30 had, and a fine one too. They’d have wasted it, if it 
hadn’t been for me.” 

“What do you call wasting of it?” asked old Joe. 

“Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” replied 
the woman with a laugh. “Somebody was fool enough to 
35 do it, but I took it off again. If calico ain’t good enough 
for such a purpose, it isn’t good enough for anything. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL ^ 105 

It’s quite as becoming to the body. He can’t look uglier 
than he did in that one.” 

Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they 
sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded 
by the old man’s lamp, he viewed them with a detestation 5 
and disgust, which could hardly have been greater, though 
they had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse 
itself. 

“Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman, when old Joe, 
producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their ic 
several gains upon the ground. “This is the end of it, you 
see 1 He frightened every one away from him when he was 
alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, hal” 

“Spirit!” said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. 

“I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be 15 
my own. 5Iy life tends that way, now. ^Merciful Heaven, 
what is this!” 

He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and 
now he almost touched a bed; a bare, uncurtained bed; 
on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something 2Q 
covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself 
in awful language. 

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with 
any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience 
to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room 25 
it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight 
upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, 
unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man. 

Scrooge glanced toAvards the Phantom. Jts steady hand 
was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly so 
adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a 
finger upon Scrooge’s part, would have disclosed the face. 

He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed 
to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than 
to dismiss the spectre at his side. 35 

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar 


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here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy 
command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, 
revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair 
to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It 
5 is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when 
released; it it not that the heart and pulse are still; but 
that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart 
brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, 
Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from 
JO the wound, to sow the world with life immortal! 

No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s ears, 
and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He 
thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be 
his foremost thoughts ? Avarice, hard dealing, griping ! 
15 cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly! ' 

He lay in the dark empty house, with not a man, a 
woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this 
or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind 
to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a 
30 sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What 
they wanted in the room of death, and why they were ; 
so restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think. 

“Spirit!” he said, “this is a fearful place. In leaving 
it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!” 

35 Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the 
head. 

“I understand you,” Scrooge returned, “and I would 
do it, if I could. But I have not the power. Spirit. I , 
have not the power.” 

30 Again it seemed to look upon him. 

“If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion 
caused by this man’s death,” said Scrooge quite agonized, 
“show that person to me. Spirit, I beseech you!” 

The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a 
35 moment, like a wing ; and withdrawing it, revealed a room 
by daylight, where a mother and her children were. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


107 


She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; 
for she walked up and down the room; started at every 
sound; looked out from the window; glanced at the clock; 
tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could 
hardly bear the voices of the children in their play. 5 

At length the long-expected knock was heard. She 
hurried to the door, and met her husband; a man whose 
face was careworn and depressed, though he was young. 
There was a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of 
serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he 10 
struggled to repress. 

He sat dow'n to the dinner that had been hoarding for 
him by the fire; and w^hen she asked him faintly what news 
(which was not until after a long silence), he appeared 
embarrassed how" to answer. 15 

“Is it good,” she said, “or bad?” — to help him. 

“Bad,” he answ’ered. 

“We are quite ruined?” 

“No. There is hope yet, Caroline.” 

“If he relents,” she said, amazed, “there is! Nothing 20 
is past hope, if such a miracle has happened.” 

“He is past relenting,” said her husband. “He is 
dead.” 

She w"as a mild and patient creature -if her face spoke 
truth ; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she 25 
said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the 
next moment, and w"as sorry ; but the first was the emotion 
of the heart. 

“What the half -drunken w^oman whom I told you of last 
night, said to me, w"hen I tried to see him and obtain a 30 
week’s delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to 
avoid me; turns out to have been quite true. He w"as not 
only very ill, but dying, then.” 

“To whom will our debt be transferred ?” 

“I don’t know. But before that time we shall be ready S 5 
with the money; and even though w"e were not, it would be 


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bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his 
successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caro- 
line!” 

Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. 

5 The children’s faces, hushed, and clustered round to hear 
what they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a 
happier house for this man’s death! The only emotion 
that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was 
one of pleasure. 

10 ‘Tet me see some tenderness connected with a death,” 
said Scrooge; ‘‘or that dark chamber. Spirit, which we left 
just now, will be forever present to me.” 

The Ghost conducted him through several streets famil- j 
iar to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here 
15 and there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. | 
They entered poor Bob Cratchit’s house; the dwelling 
he had visited before; and found the mother and the chil- 
dren seated round the fire. | 

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as I 
20 still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, ^ 
who had a book before him. The mother and her daugh- j 

ters were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very | 

quiet! 

” ‘And he took a child, and set him in the midst of i 
35 them.’ ” ■ I 

Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not | 
dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he 
and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not go on ? ' 

The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her ^ 
so hand up to her face. i 

“The colour hurts my eyes,” she said. i 

The colour ? Ah, poor Tiny Tim ! | 

‘‘They’re better now again,” said Cratchit’s wife. “It | 
makes them weak by candlelight; and I wouldn’t show 
35 weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the 
world. It must be near his time.” 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


109 


‘Tast it rather/’ Peter answered, shutting up his book. 
“But I think he’s walked a little slower than he used, these 
few last evenings, mother.” 

• They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a 
steady cheerful voice, that only faltered once : — 

“I have known him walk with — I have known him walk 
with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed.” 

“And so have I,” cried Peter. “Often.” 

“And so have I,” exclaimed another. So had all. 

“But he was so very light to carry,” she resumed, intent 
upon her work, “and his father loved him so, that it was no 
trouble — no trouble. And there is your father at the 
door!” 

She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his com- 
forter — he had need of it, poor fellow — came in. His tea 
was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should 
help him to it most. Then the two young Cratchits got 
upon his knees and laid, each child a little cheek, against 
his face, as if they said, “Don’t mind it, father. Don’t be 
grieved 1” 

Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly 
to all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, 
and praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and 
the girls. They would be done long before Sunday he 
said. 

“Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?” said his 
wife. 

“Yes, my dear,” returned Bob. “I wish you could have 
gone. It would have done you good to see how green a 
place it is. But you’ll see it often. I promised him that I 
would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child!” 
cried Bob. “My little child !” 

He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help it. If he 
could have helped it, he and his child would have been 
farther apart perhaps than they were. 

He left the room, and went up stairs into the room above. 


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which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. 
There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were 
signs of some one having been there lately. Poor Bob sat 
down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed 
himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to 
what had happened, and went down again quite happy. 

They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and 
mother working still. Bob told them of the extraordinary 
kindness of Mr. Scrooge’s nephew, whom he had scarcely 
seen but once, and who, meeting him in the street that day, 
and seeing that he looked a little — “just a little down you 
know,” said Bob, inquired what had happened to distress 
him. “On which,” said Bob, “for he is the pleasantest- 
spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told him. T am 
heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit,’ he said, ‘and heartily 
sorry for your good wife.’ By the bye, how he ever knew 
that, I don’t know.” 

“Knew" what, my dear?” 

“Why, that you were a good wdfe,” replied Bob. 

“Everybody know’s that!” said Peter. 

“Very w^ell observed, my boy!” cried Bob. “I hope they 
do. ‘Heartily sorry,’ he said, ‘for your good wife. If 1 
can be of service to you in any way,’ he said, giving me his 
card, ‘that’s where I live. Pray come to me.’ Now, it 
wasn’t,” cried Bob, “for the sake of anything he might be 
able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was 
quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our 
Tiny Tim, and felt with us.” 

“I’m sure he’s a good soul!” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“You would be surer of it, my dear,” returned Bob, “if 
you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn’t be at all surprised, 
mark what I say, if he got Peter a better situation.” 

“Only hear that, Peter,” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“And then,” cried one of the girls, “Peter will be keep- 
ing company with some one, and setting up for himself.” 

“Get along with you!” retorted Peter, grinning. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


111 


“It’s just as likely as not,” said Bob, '‘one of these days; 
though there’s plenty of time for that, my dear. But how- 
ever and whenever we part from one another, I am sure 
we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim — shall we — or 
this first parting that there was among us ?” 

“Never, father!” cried they all. 

“And I know,” said Bob, “I know, my dears, that when 
we recollect how patient and how mild he was ; although he 
was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among 
ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.” 

“No, never, father!” they all cried again. 

“I am very happy,” said little Bob, “I am very happy!” 

Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the 
two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself 
shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence 
was from God! 

“Spectre,” said Scrooge, “something informs me that our 
parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. 
Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead ?” 

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as 
before — though at a different time, he thought: indeed, 
there seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they 
were in the Future — into the resorts of business men, but 
showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay 
for ami;hing, but went straight on, as to the end just now 
desired, until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment. 

“This court,” said Scrooge, “through which we hurry 
now, is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a 
length of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I 
shall be, in days to come!” 

The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere. 

“The house is yonder,” Scrooge exclaimed. “Why do 
you point away ?” 

The inexorable finger underwent no change. 

Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked 
in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself. 
The Phantom pointed as before. 

He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither 
he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron 
5 gate. He paused to look round before entering. 

A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man whose 
name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. 
It was a worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by 
grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation’s death, not life; 
10 choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted appe- 
tite. A worthy place ! 

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to 
One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom 
was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw 
15 new meaning in its solemn shape. 

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” 
said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the 
shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of 
things that May be, only ?” 

20 Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which 
it stood. 

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, 
if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if 
the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it 
25 is thus with what you show me !” 

The Spirit was immovable as ever. 

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and fol- 
lowing the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave 
his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge. 

30 “Am I that man who lay upon the bed?” he cried, upon 
his knees. 

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back 
again. 

“No, Spirit ! Oh, no, no 1 ” 

The finger still was there. 

“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, “hear me I 


35 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


113 


I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have 
been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am 
past all hope !” ' 

For the first time the hand appeared to shake. 

“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he 
fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities 
me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you 
have shown me, by an altered life !” 

The kind hand trembled. 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it 
all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the 
Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I 
will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I 
may sponge away the writing on this stone 1” 

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to 
free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. 
The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him. 

Holding up his hands in one last prayer to have his fate 
reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and 
dress. It shrank, collapsed, and dwindled down to a bed- 
post. 


5 

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20 


STAVE FIVE 


THE END OF IT 

YesI and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his 
own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the 
Time before him was his own, to make amends in ! 

“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” 
5 Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ‘'The 
Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob 
Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for 
this I I say it on my knees, old Jacob, on my knees I” 

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good inten- 
10 tions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his 
call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with 
the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears. 

“They are not torn down,” cried Scrooge, folding one of 
his bed-curtains in his arms, “they are not torn down, rings 
15 and all. They are here: I am here: the shadows of the 
things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will 
be. I know they will!” 

His hands were busy with his garments all this time: 
turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tear- 
20 ing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every 
kind of extravagance. 

“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and 
crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoon of 
himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I 
25 am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I 
am as giddy as a drunken man. A Merry Christmas to 
everybody! A Happy New Year to all the world. Hallo 
here! Whoop! Hallo!” 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


ii5 

He had frisked into the sitting room, and was now stand- 
ing there: perfectly winded. 

“There’s the saucepan that the gruel was in!” cried 
Scrooge, starting off again, and frisking round the fireplace. 
“There’s the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley 
entered! There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christ- 
mas Present sat! There’s the window where I saw the 
wandering Spirits ! It’s all right, it’s all true, it all hap- 
pened. Ha, ha, ha !” 

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so 
many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious 
laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs! 

“I don’t know what day of the month it is!” said Scrooge. 
“1 don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I 
don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. 
I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! 
Hallo here!” 

He was checked in his transports by the churches ring- 
ing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, 
hammer, ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding, hammer, 
clang, clash ! Oh, glorious, glorious ! 

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his 
head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; 
cold, piping for the blood to dance to; golden sunlight; 
heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. 
Glorious ! 

“What’s to-day?” cried Scrooge, calling downward to a 
boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look 
about him. 

“Eh ?” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder. 

“What’s to-day, my fine fellow ?” said Scrooge. 

“To-day!” replied the boy. “Why, Christmas Day.” 

“It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to himself. “1 
haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one 
night. They can do anything they like. Of course they 
can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow ?” 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“Hallo!” returned the boy. 

“Do you know the Poulterer’s, in the next street but one, 
at the corner ?” Scrooge inquired. 

“I should hope I did,” replied the lad. 

5 “An intelligent boy!” said Scrooge. “A remarkable 
boy! Do you know w^hether they’ve sold the prize Tur- 
key that was hanging up there? Not the little prize Tur- 
key: the big one ?” 

“What, the one as big as me?” returned the boy. 

10 “What a delightful boy!” said Scrooge. “It’s a pleasure 
to talk to him. Yes, my buck!” 

“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy. 

“Is it ?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.” 

“Walk-ER!” exclaimed the boy. 

15 “No, no,” said Scrooge, “I am in earnest. Go and buy 
it, and tell ’em to bring it here, that I may give them the 
direction where to take it. Come back wdth the man, and 
I’ll give you a shilling. Come back wdth him in less than 
five minutes, and I’ll give you half-a-crown 1” 

20 The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady 
hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast. 

“I’ll send it to Bob Cratchit’s!” whispered Scrooge, rub- 
bing his hands, and splitting wdth a laugh. “He shan’t know 
who sends it. It’s twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe iMiller 
25 never made such a joke as sending it to Bob’s wdll be!” 

The hand in which he WTote the address w^as not a steady 
one, but write it he did, somehow', and went dow'n stairs to 
open the street door, ready for the coming of the poulterer’s 
man. As he stood there, w aiting his arrival, the knocker 
30 caught his eye. 

“I shall love it, as long as I live!” cried Scrooge, patting 
it w'ith his hand. “I scarcely ever looked at it before. 
What an honest expression it has in its. face! It’s a won- 
derful knocker! — Here’s the Turkey Hallo! Whoop! 
35 How are you! Merry Christmas!” 

It was a Turkey! He could never have stood upon his 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


117 


legs, that bird. He would have snapped ’em short off in a 
minute, like sticks of sealing-wax. 

“Why, it’s impossible to carry that to Camden Town,” 
said Scrooge. “.You must have a cab.” 

The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle 5 
with which he paid for the turkey, and the chuckle with 
which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he 
recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the 
chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair 
again, and chuckled till he cried. lo 

Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to 
shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even 
when you don’t dance while you are at it. But if he had cut 
the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of stick- 
ing-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied. la 

He dressed himself “all in his best,” and at last got out 
into the streets. The people were by this time pouring 
forth, as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas 
Present; and walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge 
regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so 20 
irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good- 
humoured fellows said, “Good morning, Sir! A Merry 
Christmas to you!” And Scrooge said often afterwards, 
that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were 
the blithest in his ears. 25 

He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he 
beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his 
counting-house the day before and said, “Scrooge and 
Marley’s, I believe?” It sent a pang across his heart to 
think how this old gentleman would look upon him when 30 
they met; but he knew what path lay straight before him, 
and he took it. 

“My dear Sir,” said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and 
taking the old gentleman by both his hands. “How do you 
do ? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind 35 
of you. A Merry Christmas to you, Sir!” 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


■'Mr. Scrooge ?” 

“Yes,” said Scrooge. “That is my name, and I fear it 
may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your par- 
don. And will you have the goodness” — here Scrooge 
5 whispered in his ear. 

“Lord bless me!” cried the gentleman, as if his breath 
were gone. ‘ Aly dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious ?” 

“If you please,” said Mr. Scrooge. “Not a farthing less. 
A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure 
10 you. Will you do me that favour ?” 

“My dear Sir,” said the other, shaking hands with him, 
T don’t know what to say to such munifi ” 

“Don’t say anything, please,” retorted Scrooge. “Come 
and see me. Will you come and see me?” 

15 “I will!” cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he 
meant to do it. 

“Thank’ee,” said Scrooge. “I am much obliged to 
you. I thank you fifty times. Bless you!” 

He went to church, and walked about the streets, and 
20 watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted 
children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked 
down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; 
and found that everything could yield him pleasure. 
He had never dreamed that any walk — that anything — 
25 could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon, 
he turned his steps towards his nephew’s house. 

He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the 
courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and 
did it: — 

80 “Is your master at home, my dear?” said Scrooge to the 
girl. Nice girl! Very. 

“Yes, Sir.” 

“Where is he, my love?” said Scrooge. 

“He’s in the dining-room. Sir, along with mistress. 
85 I’ll show you up stairs, if you please.” 

“Thank’ee. He knows me,” said Scrooge, with his 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


119 


hand already on the dining-room lock, “ril go in here, 
my dear.” 

He turned it gently, and sidled his face in round the door. 
They were looking at the table (which was spread out in 
great array) ; for these young housekeepers are always 
nervous on such points, and like to see that everything is 
right. 

“Fred!” said Scrooge. 

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started! 
Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting 
in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn’t have done 
it, on any account. 

“Why, bless my soul!” cried Fred, “who’s that?” 

“It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. 
Will you let me in, Fred?” 

Let him in! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. 
He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be 
heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper 
when he came. So did the plump sister, when she came. 
So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, 
wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful 
happiness ! 

But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he 
was early there. If he could only be there first, and 
catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he 
had set his heart upon. 

And he did it; yes he did! The clock struck nine. 
No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen 
minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his 
door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank. 

His hat was off, before he opened the door; his com- 
forter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away 
with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o’clock. 

“Hallo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice 
as near as he could feign it. “What do you mean by 
coming here at this time of day?” 


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A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“I am very sorry, Sir,’’ said Bob. I am behind my 
time.” 

“You are?” repeated Scrooge. “Yes. I think you 
are. Step this way. Sir, if you please.” 

5 “It’s only once a year. Sir,” pleaded Bob, appearing 
from the Tank. “It shall not be repeated. I was making 
rather merry yesterday. Sir.” 

“Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” said Scrooge, 
“I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. 
10 And therefore,” he continued, leaping from his stool, and 
giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered 
back into the Tank again: “and therefore I am about 
to raise your salary!” 

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. 
15 He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with 
it; holding him; and calling to the people in the court for 
help and a strait waistcoat. 

“A Merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an 
earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him 
20 on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good 
fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I’ll raise 
your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling 
family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, 
over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop. Bob! Make 
25 up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot 
another i. Bob Cratchit!” 

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and 
infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he 
was a second father. He became as good a friend, as 
30 good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city 
knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in 
the good old world. Some people laughed to see the 
alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded 
them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing 
35 ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


121 


people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset ; and 
knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he 
thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their 
eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. 
His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for 
him. 

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived 
upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; 
and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep 
Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. 
May that be truly said of us, and ah of us! And so, as 
Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One I 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


IN TWO CHAPTERS 

Chapter I 

THE WRECK 

I was apprenticed to the Sea when I was twelve years 
old, and I have encountered a great deal of rough weather, 
both literal and metaphorical. It has always been my 
opinion since I first possessed such a thing as an opinion, 
5 that the man who knows only one subject is next tiresome 
to the man who knows no subject. Therefore, in the 
course of my life I have taught myself whatever I could, 
and although I am not an educated man, I am able, I am 
thankful to say, to have an intelligent interest in most 
10 things. 

A person might suppose, from reading the above, that I 
am in the habit of holding forth about number one. That 
is not the case. Just as if I was to come into a room 
among strangers, and must either be introduced or intro- 
15 d.uce myself, so I have taken the liberty of passing these 
few remarks, simply and plainly that it may be known 
who and what I am. I will add no more of the sort than 
that my name is William George Ravender, that I was 
born at Penrith half a year after my own father was 
20 drowned, and that I am on the second day of this present 
blessed Christmas week of one thousand eight hundred 
and fifty-six, fifty-six years of age. 

When the rumour first went flying up and down that 
there was gold in California — which, as most people 
25 know, was before it was discovered in the British colony of 
Australia — I was in the West Indies, trading among the 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


123 


Islands. Being in command and likewise part-owner of a 
smart schooner, I had my work cut out for me, and I was 
doing it. Consequently, gold in California was no busi- 
ness of mine. 

But, by the time when I came home to England again, 
the thing was as clear as your hand held up before you at 
noon-day. There was Californian gold in the museums 
and in the goldsmiths’ shops, and the very first time I went 
upon ’Change, I met a friend of mine (a seafaring man like 
myself), with a Californian nugget hanging to his watch- 
chain. I handled it. It was as like a peeled walnut with 
bits unevenly broken off here and there, and then electro- 
typed all over, as ever I saw anything in my life. 

I am a single man (she was too good for this world and 
for me, and she died six weeks before our marriage-day), 
so when I am ashore, I live in my house at Poplar. My 
house at Poplar is taken care of and kept ship-shape by an 
old lady who was my mother’s maid before I was born. 
She is as handsome and as upright as any old lady in the 
world. She is as fond of me as if she had ever had an only 
son, and I was he. ^Vell do I know wherever I sail that 
she never lays down her head at night without having- 
said, “Merciful Lord! bless and preserve William George 
Ravender, and send him safe home, through Christ our 
Saviour!” I have thought of it in many a dangerous 
moment, when it has done me no harm, I am sure. 

In my house at Poplar, along with this old lady, I lived 
quiet for best part of a year: having had a long spell of it 
among the Islands, and having (which was very uncommon 
in me) taken the fever rather badly. At last, being strong 
and hearty, and having read every book I could lay hold of, 
right out, I was walking down Leadenhall Street in the 
City of London, thinking of turning-to again, when I met 
what I call Smithick and Watersby of Liverpool. I 
chanced to lift up my eyes from looking in at a ship’s 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


chronometer in a window, and I saw him bearing down 
upon me, head on. 

It is, personally, neither Smithick, nor Watersby, that I 
here mention, nor was I ever acquainted with any man of 
5 either of those names, nor do I think that there has been 
any one of either of those names in that Liverpool House 
for years back. But, it is in reality the House itself that I 
refer to; and a wiser merchant or a truer gentleman never 
stepped. 

10 “My dear Captain Ravender,” says he. “Of all the men 
on earth, I wanted to see you most. I was on my way to 

you.” 

“Well!” says I. “That looks as if you were to see me, 
don’t it?” With that I put my arm in his, and we walked 
15 on towards the Royal Exchange, and when we got there, 
walked up and down at the back of it where the Clock- 
Tower is. We walked an hour and more, for he had 
much to say to me. He had a scheme for chartering a new 
ship of their own to take out cargo to the diggers and emi- 
20 grants in California, and to buy and bring back gold. 
Into the particulars of that scheme I will not enter, and I 
have no right to enter. All I say of it is, that it was a very 
original one, a very fine one, a very sound one, and a very 
lucrative one beyond doubt. 

25 He imparted it to me as freely as if I had been a part of 
himself. After doing so, he made me the handsomest 
sharing offer that ever was made to me, boy or man — or I 
believe to any other captain in the Merchant Navy — and 
he took this round turn to finish with: 

30 “Ravender, you are well aware that the lawlessness of 
that coast and country at present is as special as the cir- 
cumstances in which it is placed. Crews of vessels out- 
ward bound desert as soon as they make the land; crews 
of vessels homeward-bound, ship at enormous wages, with 
35 the express intention of murdering the captain and seizing 
the gold freight; no man can trust another, and the devil 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEX :MARY 


125 


seems let loose. Now,” says he, “you know my opinion of 
you, and you know I am only expressing it, and with no 
singularity, when I tell you that you are almost the only 
man on whose integrity, discretion, and energy — ” &c., &c. 
For, I don’t want to repeat what he said, though I was and 5 
am sensible of it. 

Notwithstanding my being, as I have mentioned, quite 
ready for a voyage, still I had some doubts of this voyage. 

Of course I knew, without being told, that there AA^ere 
peculiar difficulties and dangers in it, a long Avay over and 10 
aboA^e those aa hich attend all A^oyages. It must not be sup- 
I)osed that I was afraid to face them ; but, in my opinion a 
man has no manly mmtive or sustainment in his oAvn breast 
for facing dangers, unless he has well considered what they 
are, and is quietly able to say to himself, “None of these 15 
perils can now take me by surprise ; I shall knoAv AA'hat to do 
for the best in any of them; all the rest lies in the higher 
and greater hands to which I humbly commit myself.” On 
this principle I have so attentiA^ely considered (regarding 
it as my duty) all the hazards I have ever been able to think 20 
of, in the ordinary way of storm, shipAVTeck, and fire at sea, 
that I hope I should be prepared to do, in any of those cases 
whatever could be done, to saA^e the lives entrusted to my 
charge. 

As I was thoughtful, my good friend proposed that he 25 
should leave me to walk there as long as I liked, and that I 
should dine with him by-and-bye at his club in Pall Mall. 

I accepted the invitation and I Avalked up and doAAm there, 
quarter-deck fashion, a matter of a couple of hours; noAV 
and then looking up at the aa eathercock as I might have 30 
looked up aloft ; and noAv and then taking a look into Corn- 
hill, as I might have taken a look oA^er the side. 

All dinner-time, and all after dinner-time, AA'e talked it 
over again. I gave him my views of his plan, and he A^ery 
much approved of the same. I told him I had nearly de- 35 
cided, but not quite. “Well, Av^ell,” says he, “come doAvn 


12G 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


to Liverpool to-morrow with me, and see the Golden 
Mary.” I liked the name (her name was Mary, and she 
was golden, if golden stands for good), so I began to feel 
that it was almost done when I said I would go to Liver- 
5 pool. On the next morning, but one we were on board 
the Golden Mary. I might have known, from his asking 
me to come down and see her, what she was. I declare 
her to have been the completest and most exquisite Beauty 
that ever I set my eyes upon. 

10 We had inspected every timber in her, and had come 
back to the gangway to go ashore from the dock-basin, 
when I put out my hand to my friend. “Touch upon it,” 
says I, “ and touch heartily. I take command of this ship 
and I am hers and yours, if I can get John Steadiman 
15 for my chief mate.” 

John Steadiman had sailed with me four voyages. The 
first voyage John was third mate out to China, and came 
home second. The other three voyages he was my first 
officer. At this time of chartering the Golden Mary, he 
20 was aged thirty-tw^o. A brisk, bright, blue-eyed fellow, a 
very neat figure and rather under the middle size, never 
out of the way and never in it, a face that pleased everybody 
and that all children took to, a habit of going about sing- 
ing as cheerily as a blackbird, and a perfect sailor. 

25 We were in one of those Liverpool hackney-coaches in 
less than a minute, and we cruised about in her upwards of 
three hours, looking for John. John had come home from 
Van Diemen’s Land barely a month before, and I had 
heard of him as taking a frisk in Liverpool. We asked 
30 after him, among many other places at the two boarding- 
houses he was fondest of, and we found he had had a week’s 
spell at each of them ; but, he had gone here and gone there, 
and had set off “to lay out on the main-to’ -gallant-yard of 
the highest Welsh mountain” (so he had told the people of 
35 the house), and where he might be then, or when he might 
come back nobody could tell us. But it was surprising, to 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


127 


be sure, to see how every face brightened the moment there 
was mention made of the name of Mr. Steadiman. 

We were taken aback at meeting with no better luck, and 
we had wore ship and put her head for my friends, when as 
we were jogging through the streets, I clap my eyes on 
John himself conjing out of a toy-shop! He was carry- 
ing a little boy, and conducting two uncommon pretty 
women to their coach, and he told me afterwards that he 
had never in his life seen one of the three before, but that 
he was so taken with them on looking in at the toy-shop 
while they were buying the child a cranky Noah’s Ark, 
very much down by the head, that he had gone in and 
asked the ladies’ permission to treat him to a tolerably 
correct Cutter there was in the window, in order that such 
a handsome boy might not grow up with a lubberly idea of 
naval architecture. 

We stood off and on until the ladies’ coachman began to 
give way, and then we hailed John. On his coming aboard 
of us, I told him, very gravely, what I had said to my 
friend. It struck him, as he said himself, amidships. He 
was quite shaken by it. “Captain Ravender,” were John 
Steadiman’s words, “such an opinion from you is true 
commendation, and I’ll sail round the world with you 
for twenty years if you hoist the signal, and stand by you 
for ever!” And now indeed I felt that it was done, and 
that the Golden Alary was afloat. 

Grass never grew yet under the feet of Smithick and 
Watersby. The riggers were out of that ship in a fort- 
night’s time, and we had begun taking in cargo. John 
was always aboard, seeing everything stowed with his own 
eyes; and whenever I went aboard myself early or late, 
whether he was below in the hold, or on deck at the hatch- 
way, or overhauling his cabin,' nailing up pictures in it of 
the Blush Roses of England, the Blue Belles of Scotland, 
and the female Shamrock of Ireland: of a certainty 1 
heard John singing like a blackbird. 


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We had room for twenty passengers. Our sailing ad- 
vertisement was no sooner out, than we might have taken 
these twenty times over. In entering our men, I and 
John (both together) picked them, and we entered none 
5 but good hands — as good as were to be found in that port. 
And so, in a good ship of the best build, well owned, 
well arranged, well officered, well manned, well found in 
all respects, we parted with our pilot at a quarter past four 
o’clock in the afternoon of the seventh of March, one 
10 thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, and stood with a 
fair wind out to sea. 

It may be easily believed that up to that time I had had 
no leisure to be intimate with my passengers. The most 
of them were then in their berths seasick; however, in 
15 going among them, telling them what was good for them, 
persuading them not to be there, but to come up on deck 
and feel the breeze, and in rousing them with a joke, or a 
comfortable word, I made acquaintance with them, per- 
haps, in a more friendly and confidential way from the 
20 first, than I might have done at the cabin table. 

(Jf my passengers, I need only particularize, just at 
present, a bright-eyed blooming young wife who was going 
out to join her husband in California, taking with her 
their only child, a little girl of three years old, whom he 
25 had never seen ; a sedate young woman in black, some five 
years older (about thirty as I should say), who was going 
out to join a brother; and an old gentleman, a good deal 
like a hawk if his eyes had been better and not so red, who 
was always talking, morning, noon, and night, about the 
30 gold discovery. But, whether he was making the voyage, 
thinking his old arms could dig for gold, or whether his 
speculation was to buy it, or to barter for it, or to cheat for 
it, or to snatch it anyhow from other people, was his 
secret. He kept his secret. 

35 These three and the child were the soonest well. The 
child was a most engaging child, to be sure, and very 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 129 

fond of me: though I am bound to admit that John Stead- 
iman and I were borne on her pretty little books in reverse 
order, and that he was captain there, and I was mate. It 
was beautiful to watch her with John, and it was beautiful 
to watch John with her. Few would have thought it 
possible, to see John playing at Bo-peep round the mast, 
that he was the man who had caught up an iron bar and 
struck a Malay and a INlaltese dead, as they were gliding 
with their knives down the cabin stair aboard the barque 
Old England, when the captain lay ill in his cot, off Sauger 
Point. But he was; and give him his back against a bul- 
wark, he would have done the same by half a dozen of 
them. The name of the young mother was Mrs. Ather- 
field, the name of the young lady in black was Miss Cole- 
shaw, and the name of the old gentleman was Mr. Rarx. 

As the child had a quantity of shining fair hair, cluster- 
ing in curls all around her face, and as her name was Lucy, 
Steadiman gave her the name of Golden Lucy. So, we 
had the Golden Lucy and the Golden INIary; and John 
kept up the idea to that extent as he and the child went 
playing about the decks, that I believe she used to think 
the ship was alive somehow — a sister or companion, going 
to the same place as herself. She liked to be by the wheel, 
and in fine weather, I have often stood by the man whose 
trick it was at the wheel, only to hear her, sitting near my 
feet, talking to the ship. Never had a child such a doll 
before, I suppose ; but she made a doll of the Golden Mary, 
and used to dress her up by tying ribbons and little bits of 
finery to the belaying pins; and nobody ever moved them, 
unless it was to save them from being blown away. 

Of course I took charge of the two young women, and 
I called them “my dear,” and they never minded, knowing 
that whatever I said was said in a fatherly and protecting 
spirit. T gave them their places on each side of me at 
dinner, Mrs. Atherfield on my right and Miss Coleshaw 
on my left; and I directed the unmarried lady to serve 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


out the breakfast, and the married lady to serve out the 
tea. Likewise I said to my black steward in their pres- 
ence, “Tom Snow, these two ladies are equally the mis- 
> tresses of this house, and do you obey their orders eq\ially;” 
5 at which Tom laughed, and they all laughed. 

Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet 
to talk to, or to be with, for no one could help seeing that 
he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had 
warped further and further out of the straight with time. 
10 Not but what he was on his best behaviour with us, as 
everybody was ; for we had no bickering among us, for’ard 
or aft. I only mean to say, he was not the man one would 
have chosen for a messmate. If choice there had been, one 
might even have gone a few points out of one’s course to 
15 say, “No! Not him!” But, there was one curious incon- 
sistency in Mr. Rarx. That was, that he took an aston- 
ishing interest in the child. He looked, and I may add, 
he was, one of the last of men to care at all for a child, or 
care much for any human creature. Still, he went so far 
20 as to be habitually uneasy, if the child was long on deck, 
out of his sight. He w^as always afraid of her falling over- 
board, or falling down a hatchway, or of a block or what 
not coming down upon her from the rigging in the work- 
ing of the ship, or of her getting some hurt or other. He 
25 used to look at her and touch her, as if she was something 
precious to him. He was always solicitous about her not 
injuring her health, and constantly entreated her mother 
to be careful of it. This was so much the more curious, 
because the child did not like him, but used to shrink away 
30 from him, and would not even put out her hand to him 
without coaxing from others. I believe that every soul 
on board frequently noticed this, and not one of us under- 
stood it. However, it was such a plain fact, that John 
Steadiman said more than once when old Mr. Rarx was 
35 not within earshot, that if the Golden ]Mary felt a tender- 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


131 


ness for the dear old gentleman she carried in her lap, 
she must be bitterly jealous of the Golden Lucy. 

Before I go any further with this narrative, I will state 
that our ship was a barque of three hundred tons, carry- 
ing a crew of eighteen men, a second mate in addition to 
John, a carpenter, an armourer or smith, and two appren- 
tices (one a Scotch boy, poor little fellow). We had 
three boats; the Long-boat, capable of carrying twenty- 
five men; the Cutter, capable of carrying fifteen; and the 
Surf-boat, capable of carrying ten. I put down the capac- 
ity of these boats according to the numbers they were 
really meant to hold. 

We had tastes of bad weather and head-winds, of 
course; but, on the whole, we had as fine a run as any 
reasonable man could expect, for sixty days. I then began 
to enter two remarks in the ship’s Log and in my Jour- 
nal ; first, that there was an unusual and amazing quantity 
of ice; second, that the nights were most wonderfully dark 
in spite of the ice. 

For five days and a half, it seemed quite useless and 
hopeless to alter the ship’s course so as to stand out of the 
way of this ice. I made what southing I could; but, all 
that time, we were beset by it. Mrs. Atherfield after 
standing by me on deck once, looking for some time in an 
awed manner at the great bergs that surrounded us, said 
in a whisper, “O! Captain Ravender, it looks as if the 
whole solid earth had changed into ice, and broken up!” 
I said to her, laughing, “I don’t wonder that it does, to your 
inexperienced eyes, my dear.” But I had never seen a 
twentieth part of the quantity, and, in reality, I was pretty 
much of her opinion. 

However, at two p. :\i. on the afternoon of the sixth day, 
that is to say, when we were sixty-six days out, John 
Steadiman, who had gone aloft, sang out from the top, 
that the sea was clear ahead. Before four p. m. a strong 
breeze springing up right astern, we were in open water 


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at sunset. The breeze then freshening into half a gale of 
wind, and the Golden Mary being a very fast sailer, we 
went before the wind merrily, all night. 

I had thought it impossible that it could be darker than 
5 it had been, until the sun, moon, and stars should fall out 
of the Heavens, and Time should be destroyed; but, it 
had been next to light, in comparison with what it was 
now. The darkness was so profound, that looking into 
it was painful and oppressive — like looking, without a 
10 ray of light, into a dense black bandage put as close before 
the eyes as it could be, without touching them. I doubled 
the lookout, and John and I stood in the bow side-by- 
side, never leaving it all night. Yet I should no more 
have known that he was near me when he was silent, 
15 without putting out my arm and touching him, than I 
should if he had turned in and been fast asleep below. 
We were not so much looking out, all of us, as listening 
to the utmost, both with our eyes and ears. 

Next day, I found that the mercury in the barometer, 
20 which had risen steadily since we cleared the ice, re- 
mained steady. I had had very good observations, with 
now and then the interruption of a day or so, since our 
departure. I got the sun at noon, and found that we 
were in Lat. 58° S., Long. 60° W., off New South Shet- 
25 land; in the neighborhood of Cape Horn. We were 
sixty-seven days out, that day. The ship’s reckoning 
was accurately worked and made up. The ship did her 
duty admirably, all on board were well, and all hands were 
as smart, efficient, and contented as it was possible to be. 

30 When the night came on again as dark as before, it was 
the eighth night I had been on deck. Nor had I taken 
more than a very little sleep in the day-time, my station 
being always near the helm, and often at it, while we were 
among the ice. Few but those who have tried it can 
35 imagine the difficulty and pain of only keeping the eyes 
open — ^physically open — under such circumstances, in 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


133 


such darkness. They get struck by the darkness, and 
blinded by the darkness. They make patterns in it, and 
they flash in it, as if they had gone out of your head to 
look at you. On the turn of midnight, John Steadiman, 
who was alert and fresh (for I had always made him turn s 
in by day), said to me, “Captain Ravender, I entreat of 
you to go below. I am sure you can hardly stand, and 
your voice is getting weak, sir. Go below, and take a 
little rest. I’ll call you if a block chafes.” I said to 
John in answer, “Well, well, John! Let us wait till the la 
turn of one o’clock, before we talk about that.” I had 
just had one of the ship’s lanterns held up, that I might see 
how the night went by my 'watch, and it was then twenty 
minutes after twelve. 

At five minutes before one, John sang out to the boy to i 5 
bring the lantern again, and when I told him once more 
what the time was, entreated and prayed of me to go be- 
low. “Captain Ravender,” says he, “all’s well; we can’t 
afford to have you laid up for a single hour; and I respect- 
fully and earnestly beg of you to go below.” The end of it 20 
was, that I agreed to do so, on the understanding that if 
I failed to come up of my own accord within three hours, 

I was to be punctually called. Having settled that, I left 
John in charge. But I called him to me once afterwards, 
to ask him a question. I had been to look at the barom- 25 
eter, and had seen the mercury still perfectly steady, and 
had come up the companion again to take a last look 
about me — if I can use such a word in reference to such 
darkness — when I thought that the waves, as the Golden 
Mary parted them and shook them off, had a hollow 30 
sound in them; something that I fancied was a rather 
unusual reverberation. I was standing by the quarter- 
deck rail on the starboard side, when I called John aft to 
me, and bade him listen. He did so with the greatest 
attention. Turning to me he then said, “Rely upon it, 35 
Captain Ravender, you have been without rest too long, 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


and the novelt}^is only in the state of your sense of hearing.” 
I thought so too by that time, and I think so now, though 
I can never know for absolute certain in this world, 
whether it was or not. 

5 When I left John Steadiman in charge, the ship was 
still going at a great rate through the water. The wind 
still blew right astern. Though she was making great way, 
she was under shortened sail, and had no more than she 
could easily carry. All was snug, and nothing complained. 
10 There was a pretty sea running, but not a high sea neither, 
nor at all a confused one. 

I turned in, as we seamen say, all standing. The 
meaning of that is, I did not pull my cldthes off — no, not 
even so much as my coat: though I did my shoes, for my 
15 feet were badly swelled with the deck. There was a little 
swing-lamp alight in my cabin. I thought, as I looked at 
it before shutting my eyes, that I was so tired of darkness 
and troubled by darkness, that I could have gone to sleep 
best in the midst of a million of flaming gas-lights. That 
20 was the last thought I had before I went off, except the 
prevailing thought that I should not be able to get to sleep 
at all. 

I dreamed that I was back at Penrith again, and was 
trying to get round the church, which had altered its 
25 shape very much since I last saw it, and was cloven all 
down the middle of the steeple in a most singular manner. 
Why I wanted to get round the church I don’t know; but 
1 was as anxious to do it as if my life depended on it. 
Indeed, I believe it did in the dream. For all that, 1 
30 could not get round the church. I was still trying, when 
I came against it with a violent shock, and was flung out 
of my cot against the ship’s side. Shrieks and a terrific 
outcry struck me far harder than the bruising timbers, 
and amidst sounds of grinding and crashing, and a heavy 
35 rushing and breaking of water — sounds I understood too 
well — I made my way on deck. It was not an easy thing 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 135 

to do, for the ship heeled over frightfully, and was beating 
in a furious manner. 

. I could not see the men as I went forward, but I could 
hear that they were hauling in sail, in disorder. I had my 
trumpet in my hand, and, after directing and encouraging 
them in this till it was done, I hailed first John Steadiman, 
and then my second mate, iNIr. William Rames. Both 
answered clearly and steadily. Now, I had practised 
them and all my crew, as I have ever made it a custom to 
practise all who sail with me, to take certain stations and 
wait my orders, in case of any unexpected crisis. When 
my voice was heard hailing, and their voices were heard 
answering, I was aware, through all the noises of the ship 
and sea, and all the crying of the passengers below, that 
there was a pause. “Are you ready, Rames?” — “Ay, 
ay, sir!” — “Then light up, for God’s sake!” In a moment 
he and another were burning blue-lights, and the ship and 
all on board seemed to be enclosed in a mist of light, under 
a great black dome. 

The light shone up so high that I could see the huge 
Iceberg upon which we had struck, cloven at the top and 
down the middle, exactly like Penrith Church in my dream, 
At the same moment I could see the watch last relieved 
crowding up and down on deck; I could see ]\Irs. Ather- 
field and Miss Coleshaw thrown about on the top of the 
companion as they struggled to bring the child up from 
below; I could see that the masts were going with the 
shock and the beating of the ship; I could see the fright- 
ful breach stove in on the starboard side, half the length 
of the vessel, and the sheathing and timbers spirting up; 
I could see that the Cutter was disabled, in a wreck of 
broken fragments; and I could se^ every eye turned upon 
me. It is my belief that if there had been ten thousand 
eyes there, I should have seen them all, with their different 
looks. And all this in a moment. But you must consider 
what a moment. 


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I saw the men, as they looked at me, fall towards their 
appointed stations, like good men and true. If she had 
not righted, they could have done very little there or any- 
where but die — not that it is little for a man to die at his 
post — I mean they could have done nothing to save the 
passengers and themselves. Happily, however, the vio- 
lence of the shock with which we had so determinedly 
borne down direct on that fatal Iceberg, as if it had been 
our destination instead of our destruction, had so smashed 
and pounded the ship that she got off in this same instant 
and righted. I did not want the carpenter, to tell me 
she was filling and going down; I could see and hear that. 
1 gave Haines the word to lower the Long-boat and the 
Surf-boat, and I myself told off the men for each duty. 
Not one hung back, or came before the other. I now 
whispered to John Steadiman, “John, I stand at the 
gangway here, to see every soul on board safe over the 
side. You shall have the next post of honour, and shall 
be the last but one to leave the ship. Bring up the pas- 
sengers, and range them behind me; and put Avhat pro- 
vision and water you. can get at, in the boats. Cast your 
eye for’ard, John, and you’ll see you have not a moment 
to lose.” 

My noble fellows got the boats over the side as orderly 
as I ever saw boats lowered with any sea running, and 
when they were launched, two or three of the nearest men 
in them as they held on, rising and falling with the swell, 
called out, looking up at me, “Captain Havender, if 
anything goes wrong with us, and you are saved, remember, 
we stood by you!” — “We’ll all stand by one another 
ashore, yet, please God, my lads!” says I. “Hold on 
bravely, and be tender with the women.” 

The women were an example to us. They trembled 
very much, but they were, quiet and perfectly collected. 
“Kiss me. Captain Havender,” says Mrs. Atherfield, 
“and God in heaven bless you, you good man!” “IMy 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


137 


dear,” says I, “those words are better for me than a 
life-boat.” I held her child in my arms till she was in the 
boat, and then kissed the child and handed her safe down. 
I now said to the people in her, “You have got your 
freight, my lads, all but me, and I am not coming yet 
awhile. Pull away from the ship, and keep off!” 

That was the Long-boat. Old Mr. Rarx was one of her 
complement, and he was the only passenger who had 
greatly misbehaved since the ship struck. Others had 
been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and 
not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and 
uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, 
as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness. 
His incessant cry had been that he must not be separated 
from the child, that he couldn’t see the child, and that 
he and the child must go together. He had even tried to 
wrest the child out of my arms, that he might keep her 
in his. “Mr. Rarx,” said I to him when it came to that, 
“I have a loaded pistol in my pocket; and if you don’t 
stand out of the gangway, and keep perfectly quiet, I 
shall shoot you through the heart, if you have got one.” 
Says he, “You won’t do murder. Captain Ravenderl” 
“No, sir,” says I, “I won’t murder forty-four people to 
humour you, but I’ll shoot you to save them.” After that 
he was quiet, and stood shivering a little way off, until I 
named him to go over the side. 

The Long-boat being cast off, the Surf -boat was soon 
filled. There only remained aboard the Golden Mary, 
John Mullion, the man who had kept on burning the 
blue-lights (and who had lighted every new' one at every 
old one before it w ent out, as quietly as if he had been at an 
illumination); John Steadiman; and myself. I hurried 
those tw'o into the Surf-boat, called to them to keep off, 
and waited with a grateful and relieved heart for the Long- 
boat to come and take me in, if she could. I looked at my 
watch, and it show'ed me, by the blue-light, ten minutes 


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past two. They lost no time. As soon as she was near 
enough, I swung myself into her, and called to the men, 

' “With a will, lads! She’s reeling!” We were not an 
inch too far out of the inner vortex of her going down, 

5 when, by the blue-light which John Mullion still burnt in 
the bow of the Surf -boat, we saw her lurch, and plunge 
to the bottom head-foremost. The child cried, weeping 
wildly, “O the dear Golden Mary! O look at her! Save 
her! Save the poor Golden ]\Iary!” And then the light 
10 burnt out, and the black dome seemed to come down 
upon us. 

I suppose if we had all stood atop of a mountain, and 
seen the whole remainder of the world sink away from 
under us, we could hardly have felt more shocked and 
15 solitary than we did when we knew we were alone on the 
wide ocean, and that the beautiful ship in which most of 
us had been securely asleep within half an hour was gone 
for ever. There was an awful silence in our boat, and 
such a kind of palsy on the rowers and the man at the 
20 rudder, that I felt they were scarcely keeping her before 
the sea. I spoke out then, and said, “Let every one here 
thank the Lord for our preservation!” All the voices 
answered (even the child’s), “We thank the Lord!” 

I then said the Lord’s Prayer, and all hands said it after 
uo me with a solemn murmuring. Then I gave the word ' 
“Cheerily, O men, Cheerily!” and I felt that they were 
handling the boat again as a boat ought to be handled. 

The Surf -boat now burnt another blue-light to show us 
where they were, and we made for her, and laid ourselves 
30 as nearly alongside of her as we dared. I had always 
kept my boats with a coil or two of good stout stuff in each 
of them, so both boats had a rope at hand. We made a 
shift, with much labour and trouble, to get near enough 
to one another to divide the blue-lights (they were no use 
35 after that night, for the sea-water soon got at them), and 
to get a tow-rope out between us. All night long we kept 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 139 

together, sometimes obliged to cast off the rope, and 
sometimes getting it out again, and all of us wearying 
for the morning — which appeared so long in coming that 
old Mr. Rarx screamed out, in spite of his fears of me, 
“The world is drawing to an end, and the sun will never 
rise any more!” 

When the day broke, I found that we were all huddled 
together in a miserable manner. We were deep in the 
water; being, as I found on mustering, thirty-one in 
number, or at least six too many. In the Surf -boat they 
were fourteen in number, being at least four too many. 
The first thing I did, was to get myself passed to the rud- 
der — which I took from that time — and to get Mrs. 
Atherfield, her child, and Miss Coleshaw, passed on to 
sit next me. As to old Mr. Rarx, I put him in the bow', 
as far from us as I could. And I put some of the best 
men near us in order that if I should drop there might 
be a skilful hand ready to take the helm. 

The sea moderating as the sun came up, though the sky 
was cloudy and wild, we spoke the gther boat, to know 
what stores they had, and to overhaul what we had. I 
had a compass in my pocket, a small telescope, a double- 
barrelled pistol, a knife, and a fire-box and matches. 
Most of my men had knives, and some had a little tobacco: 
some, a pipe as well. We had a mug among us, and an 
iron spoon. As to provisions, there were in my boat two 
bags of biscuit, one piece of raw beef, one piece of raw pork, 
a bag of coffee, roasted but not ground (thrown in, I 
imagine, by mistake, for something else), two small casks 
of water, and about half a gallon of rum in a keg. The 
Surf-boat, having rather more rum than we, and fewer to 
drink it, gave us, as I estimated, another quart into our 
keg. In return, we gave them three double handfuls of 
coffee, tied up in a piece of a handkerchief; they reported 
that they had aboard besides, a bag of biscuit, a piece of 
beef, a small cask of water, a small box of lemons, and a 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


Dutch cheese. It took a long time to make these ex- 
changes, and they were not made without risk to both 
parties; the sea running quite high enough to make our 
approaching near to one another very hazardous. In 
5 the bundle with the coffee, I conveyed to John Steadiman 
(who had a ship’s compass with him), a paper written in 
pencil, and torn from my poclcet-book, containing the 
course I meant to steer, in the hope of making land, or 
being picked up by some vessel — I say in the hope, though 
10 I had little hope of either deliverance. I then sang out 
to him, so as all might hear, that if we two boats could 
live or die together, we would; but, that if we should be 
parted by the weather, and join company no more, they 
should have our prayers and blessings, and we asked for 
15 theirs. We then gave them three cheers, which they re- 
turned, and I saw the men’s heads droop in both boats as 
they fell to their oars again. 

These arrangements had occupied the general attention 
advantageously for all, though (as I expressed in the last 
20 sentence) they ended in a sorrowful feeling. I now said a 
few words to my fellow-voyagers on the subject of the 
small stock of food on which our lives depended if they 
were preserved from the great deep, and on the rigid 
necessity of our eking it out in the most frugal manner. 
25 One and all replied that whatever allowance I thought 
best to lay down should be strictly kept to. We made 
a pair of scales out of a thin scrap of iron-plating and some 
twine, and I got together for weights such of the heaviest 
buttons among us as I calculated made up some fraction 
.so over two ounces. This was the allowance of solid food 
served out once a day to each, from that time to the end; 
with the addition of a coffee-berry, or sometimes half a 
one, when the weather was very fair, for breakfast. We 
had nothing else whatever, but half a pint of water each 
35 l>er day, and sometimes, when we were coldest and 
weakest, a teaspoonful of rum each, served out as a dram. 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN HARY 


141 


I know how learnedly it can be shown that rum is poison, 
but I also know that in this case, as in all similar cases I 
liave ever read of — which are numerous — no words can 
express the comfort and support derived from jt. Nor 
have I the least doubt that it saved the lives of far more 5 
than half our number. Having mentioned half a pint 
of water as our daily allowance, I ought to observe that 
sometimes we had less, and sometimes we had more; 
for much rain fell, and we caught it in a canvas stretched 
for the purpose. lo 

Thus, at that tempestuous time of the year, and in that 
tempestuous part of the world, we shipwrecked people 
rose and fell with the waves. It is not my intention to 
relate (if I can avoid it) such circumstances appertaining 
to our doleful condition as have been better told in many 15 
other narratives of the kind than I can be expected to tell 
them. I will only note, in so many passing words, that 
day after day and night after night, we received the sea 
upon our backs to prevent it from swamping the boat; 
that one party was always kept baling, and that every hat 20 
and cap among us soon gat worn out, though patched up 
fifty times, as the only vessels we had for that service; 
that another party lay down in the bottom of the boat, 
while a third rowed ; and that we were soon all in boils and 
blisters and rags. 25 

The other boat was a source of such anxious interest to 
all of us that I used to wonder whether, if we were saved, 
the time could ever come when the survivors in this boat 
of ours could be at all indifferent to the fortunes of the 
survivors in that. We got out a tow-rope whenever the 30 
weather permitted, but that did not often happen, and how 
we two parties kept within the same horizon, as we did, He, 
who mercifully permitted it to be so for our consolation, 
only knows. I never shall forget the looks with which, 
when the morning light came, we used to gaze about us 35 
over the stormy waters, for the other boat. We once 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEX MARY 


]:>arted company for seventy-two hours, and we believed 
them to have gone down, as they did us. The joy on 
both sides when we came within view of one another again, 
had something in a manner Divine in it; each was so for- 
5 getful of individual suffering, in tears of delight and sym- 
pathy for the people in the other boat. 

I have been wanting to get round to the individual or 
personal part of my subject, as I call it, and the foregoing 
incident puts me in the right way. The patience and 
10 good disposition aboard of us, was wonderful. I was not 
surprised by it in the women; for all men born of women 
know what great qualities they will show when men fail; 
but, I own I was a little surprised by it in some of the men. 
Among one-and-thirty people assembled at the best of 
15 times, there will usually, I should say, be two or three un- 
certain tempers. I knew that I had more than one rough 
temper with me among my own people, for I had chosen 
those for the Long-boat that I might have them under my 
eye. But, they softened under their misery, and were as 
20 considerate of the ladies, and as compassionate of the child, 
as the best among us, or among men — they could not have 
been more so. I heard scarcely any complaining. The 
party lying down would moan a good deal in their sleep, 
and I w^ould often notice a man — not always the same 
25 man, it is to be understood, but nearly all of them at one 
time or other — sitting moaning at his oar, or in his place, 
• as he looked mistily over the sea. When it happened to be 
long before I could catch his eye, he would go on moaning 
all the time in the dismalest manner; but when our looks 
30 met, he would brighten and leave off. I almost always 
got the impression that he did not know what sound 
he had been making, but that he thought he had been 
humming a tune. 

Our sufferings from cold and wet were far greater than 
35 our sufferings from hunger. We managed to keep the 
child warm; but, I doubt if any one else among us ever 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN HARY 


143 


was warm for five minutes together ; and the shivering, and 
the chattering of teeth, were sad to hear. The child cried 
a little at first for her lost playfellow, the Golden Mary; but 
liardly ever whimpered afterwards; and when the state of 
the weather made it possible, she used now and then to be » 
held up in the arms of some of us, to look over the sea for 
John Steadiman^s boat. I see the golden hair and the 
innocent face now, between me and the driving clouds, 
like an angel going to fly away. 

It happened on the second day, towards night, that lo 
Mrs. Atherfield, in getting little Lucy to sleep, sang her a 
song. She had a soft, melodious voice, and when she had 
finished it, our people up and begged for another. She 
sang them another, and after it had fallen dark ended with 
the Evening Hymn. From that time, whenever anything is 
could be heard above the sea and wind, and while she had 
any voice left, nothing would serve the people but that she 
should sing at sunset. She always did, and always ended 
with the Evening Hvmn. We mostly took up the last 
line, and shed tears when it was done, but not miserably. 20 
We had a prayer night and morning, also, when the weather 
allowed of it. 

Twelve nights and eleven days we had been driving in 
the boat, when old ]Mr. Rarx began to be delirious, and to 
cry out to me to throw the gold overboard or it would sink 25 
us, and we should all be lost. For days past the child had 
been declining, and that was the great cause of his wild- 
ness. He had been over and over again shrieking out to 
me to give her all the remaining meat, to give her all the re- 
maining rum, to save her at any cost, or we should all be 3o 
ruined. At this time, she lay in her mother’s arms at my 
feet. One of her little hands was almost always creeping 
about her mother’s neck or chin. I had watched the wast- 
ing of the little hand, and I knew it was nearly over. 

The old man’s cries were so discordant with the mother’s 35 
love, and submission, that I called out to him in an angry 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


voice, unless he held his peace on the instant, I would order 
him to be knocked .on the head and thrown overboard. 
He was mute then, until the child died, very peacefully, an. 
hour afterwards : which was knowm to all in the boat by the 
mother's breaking out into lamentations for the first time 
since the wreck — for, she had great fortitude and con- 
stancy, though she was a little gentle woman. Old Mr. 
Rarx then became quite ungovernable, tearing what rags 
he had on him, raging in imprecations, and calling to me 
that if I had thrown the gold overboard (always the gold 
with him I) I might have saved the child. “And now,” 
says he, in a terrible voice, “we shall founder, and all go to 
the Devil, for our sins will sink us, when we have no inno- 
cent child to bear us up!” We so discovered wiih amaze- 
ment, that this old wretch had only cared for the life of the 
pretty little creature dear to all of us, because of the in- 
fluence he superstition sly hoped she might have in preserv- 
ing him! Altogether it was too much for the smith or 
armourer, who wns sitting next the old man, to bear. He 
took him by the throat and rolled him under the thwnrts, 
where he lay still enough for hours afterwards. 

All that thirteenth night. Miss Coleshaw, lying across my 
knees as I kept the helm, comforted and supported the 
poor mother. Her child, covered with a pea-jacket of 
mine, lay in her lap. It troubled me all night to think that 
there was no Prayer-Book among us, and that I could 
remember but very few of the exact words of the burial ser- 
vice. When I stood up at broad day, all knew what was 
going to be done, and I noticed that my poor fellows made 
the motion of uncovering their heads, though their heads 
had been stark bare to the sky and sea for many a weary 
hour. There was a long heavy sw^ell on, but otherwise it 
was a fair morning, and there were broad fields of sunlight 
on the waves in the east. I said no more than this: “I 
am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord. He 
raised the daughter of Jairus the ruler, and said she was 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN ^lARY 


145 


not dead but slept. He raised the widow’s son. He 
arose Himself, and was seen of many. He loved little 
children, saying. Suffer them to come unto Me and rebuke 
them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. In his 
name, my friends, and committed to His merciful good- 5 
ness!” With those words I laid my rough face softly on 
the placid little forehead, and buried the Golden Lucy in 
the grave of the Golden Mary. 

Having had it on my mind to relate the end of this dear 
little child, I have omitted something from its exact place, 10 
which I will supply here. It will come quite as well here 
as anywhere else. 

Foreseeing that if the boat lived through the stormy 
weather, the time must come, and soon come, when we 
should have absolutely 'no morsel to eat, I had one mo- 15 
mentous point often in my thoughts. Although I had, 
years before that, fully satisfied myself that the instances 
in which human beings in the last distress have fed upon 
each other, are exceedingly few, and have very seldom 
indeed (if ever) occurred when the people in distress, how- 20 
ever dreadful their extremity, have been accustomed to 
moderate forbearance and restraint; I say, though I had 
long before quite satisfied my mind on this topic, I felt 
doubtful whether there might not have been in former 
cases some harm and danger from keeping it out of sight 25 
and pretending not to think of it. I felt doubtful whether 
some minds, growing weak with fasting and exposure and 
having such a terrific idea to dwell upon in secret, might 
not magnify it until it got to have an awful attraction' about 
it. This was not a new thought of mine, for it had grown 30 
out of my reading. However, it came over me stronger 
than it had ever done before — as it had reason for doing — 
in the boat, and on the fourth day I decided that I would 
bring out into the light that unformed fear which must 
htive been more or less darjvly in every brain among us. 33 
Therefore, as a means of beguiling the time and inspiring 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


hope, I gave them the best summary in my power of Bligh’s 
voyage of more than three thousand miles, in an open boat, 
after the Mutiny of the Bounty, and of the wonderful pres- 
ervation of that boat’s crew. They listened throughout 
5 with great interest, and I concluded by telling them, that, 
in my opinion, the happiest circumstance in the whole 
narrative was, that Bligh, who was no delicate man, either, 
had solemnly placed it on record therein that he was sure 
and certain that under no conceivable circumstances 
10 whatever would that emaciated party, who had gone 
through all the pains of famine, have preyed on one an- 
other. I cannot describe the visible relief which this 
spread through the boat, and how the tears stood in every 
eye. From that time I was as well convinced as Bligh 
15 himself that there was no danger, and that this phantom, at 
any rate, did not haunt us. 

Now, it was a part of Bligh’s experience that when the 
people in his boat were most cast down, nothing did them 
so much good as hearing a story told by-one*of their numbey. 
20 When I mentioned that, I .saw that it struck the general 
attention as much -as it did my -own, for I had not thought 
of it until I came to it in my summary. This was on the 
day after Mrs. Atherfield first sang to us. I proposed that, 
whenever the weather would permit, nve should have a story 
25 two hours- after dinner (I always issued the allowance 1 have 
mentioned at one o’clock, and called it by that name), as 
well as our song at sunset. The proposal was received 
with a cheerful satisfaction that warmed my heart within 
me; and I do not say too much when I say that those two 
30 periods in the four-and-twenty hours were expected with 
positive pleasure, and were really enjoyed by all hands. 
Spectres as we soon were, in our bodily wasting, our imag- 
inations did not perish like the gross flesh upon our bones. 
INIusic and Adventure, tw^o of the great gifts of Providence 
35 to mankind, could charm us long after that was lost. 

The wind \vas almost always against us after t'he second 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 147 

« 

day ; and for many days together we could not nearly hold 
our own. We had all varieties of bad weather. We had 
rain, hail, snow, wind, mist, thunder, and lightning. Still 
the boats lived through the heavy seas, and still we perish- 
ing people rose and fell with the great waves. 

Sixteen nights and fifteen days, twenty nights and nine- 
teen days, twenty-four nights and twenty-three days. So 
the time went on. Disheartening as I knew that our 
progress, or want of progress, must be, I never deceived 
them as to my calculations of it. In the first place, I felt 
that we were all too near eternity for deceit; in the second 
jdace, I knew that if I failed, or died, the man who followed 
me must have a knowledge of the true state of things to 
begin upon. When I told them at noon, what I reckoned 
we had made or lost, they generally received what I said 
in a tranquil and resigned manner, and always gratefully 
towards me. It was not unusual at any time of the day for 
some one to burst out weeping loudly without any new 
cause ; and, when the burst was over, to calm down a little 
better than before. I had seen exactly the same thing in a 
house of mourning. 

During the whole of this time, old Mr. Rarx had had his 
fits of calling out to me to throw the gold (always the gold 1) 
overboard, and of heaping violent reproaches upon me for 
not having saved the child ; but now, the food being all gone, 
and I having nothing left to serve out but a bit of coffee- 
berry now and then, he began to be too weak to do this, and 
consequently fell silent. Mrs. Atherfield and Miss Cole- 
shaw generally lay, each with an arm across one of my 
knees and her head upon it. They never complained at 
all. Up to the time of her child’s death, Mrs. Atherfield 
had bound up her own beautiful hair every day; and I took 
particular notice that this was always before she sang her 
song at night, when every one looked at her. But she 
never did it after the loss of her darling; and it would have 
been now all tangled with dirt and wet, but that Miss Cole- 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


shaw was careful of it long after she was, herself, and 
would sometimes smooth it down with her weak thin 
hands. 

We were past mustering a story now; but one day, at 
5 about this period, I reverted to the superstition of old ]Mr. 
Rarx, concerning the Golden Lucy, and told them that 
nothing vanished from the eye of God, though much 
might pass away from the eyes of men. “We were all of 
us,” says I, “children once; and our baby feet have strolled 
10 in green woods ashore; and our baby hands have gathered 
flowers in gardens, where the birds were singing. The 
children that we were, are not lost to the great knowledge 
of our Creator. Those innocent creatures will appear with 
us before Him, and plead for us. What we were in the 
15 best time of our generous youth will arise and go with us 
too. The purest part of our lives will not desert us at the 
pass to which all of us here present are gliding. What we 
were then, will be as much in existence before Him, as 
what we are now.” They were no less comforted by this 
20 consideration, than I was myself; and Miss Coleshaw, 
drawing my ear nearer to her lips, said, “Captain Raven- 
der, I was on my w’ay to marry a disgraced and broken man, 
whom I dearly loved when he was honourable and good. 
Your words seem to have come out of my own poor heart.” 
25 She pressed my hand upon it, smiling. 

Twenty-seven nights and tw^enty-six days. We were in 
no want of rain-water, but we had nothing else. And 
yet, even now, I never turned my eyes on a waking face but 
it tried to brighten before mine. O, what a thing it is, in a 
30 time of danger and in the presence of death, the shining of 
a face upon a face ! I have heard it broached that orders 
should be given in great new ships by electric telegraph. I 
admire machinery as much as any man, and am as thank- 
ful to it as any man can be for what it does for us. But 
85 it will never be a substitute for the face of a man, with his 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


149 


soul in it, encouraging another man to be brave and true. 
Never try it for that. It will break down like a straw. 

I now began to remark certain changes in myself which 
I did not like. They caused me much disquiet. I often 
saw the Golden Lucy in the air above the boat. I often 5 
saw her I have spoken of before, sitting beside me. I saw 
the Golden hlary go down, as she really had gone down, 
twenty times in a day. And yet the sea was mostly, to my 
thinking, not sea neither, but moving country and ex- 
traordinary mountainous regions, the like of which have lo 
never been beheld. I felt it time to leave my last words 
regarding John Steadiman, in case any lips should last out 
to repeat them to any living ears. I said that John had 
told me (as he had on deck) that he had sung out ‘‘Breakers 
ahead I” the instant they were audible, and had tried to i.’> 
wear ship, but she struck before it could be done. (His 
cry, I dare say, had made my dream.) I said that the 
circumstances were altogether without warning, and out of 
any course that could have been guarded against; that 
the same loss would have happened if I had been in charge; 20 
and that John was not to blame, but from first to last had 
done his duty nobly, like the man he was. I tried to write 
it down in my pocket-book, but could make no words, 
though I knew what the words were that I wanted to 
make. When it had come to that, her hands — though 25 
she was dead so long— laid me down gently in the bottom 
of the boat, and she and the Golden Lucy swung me to 
sleep. 

All that follows, was written by John Steadiman, Chief 
Mate: 3o 

On the twenty-sixth day after the foundering of the 
Golden Mary at sea, I, John Steadiman, was sitting in my 
place in the stern-sheets of the Surf -boat, with just sense 
enough left in me to steer — that is to say, with my eyes 
strained, wide-awake, over the bows of the boat, and my 35 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


brains fast asleep and dreaming — when I was roused 
upon a sudden by our second mate, Mr. William Raines. 

“Let me take a spell in your place/’ says lie.' “And look 
you out for the Long-boat astern. The last time she 
ros^e on the crest of a wave, I thought I made out a signal 
flying aboard her.” 

We shifted our places, clumsily and slowly enough, for 
we were both of us weak and dazed with wet, cold, and 
hunger. I waited some time, w'atching the heavy rollers 
astern, before the Long-boat rose atop of one of them 
at the same time with us. At last, she was heaved up 
for a moment well in view, and there, sure enough, was 
the signal flying aboard of her — a strip of rag of some sort, 
rigged to an oar, and hoisted in her bows. 

“What does it mean ?” says Rames to me in a quavering, 
trembling sort of voice, “Do they signal a sail in sight?” 

“Hush, for God’s sake!” says I, clapping my hand 
over his mouth. “Don’t let the people hear you. They’ll 
all go mad together if we mislead them about that signal. 
Wait a bit, till I have another look at it.” 

I held on by him, for he had set me all of a tremble 
with his notion of a sail in sight, and watched for the Long- 
boat again. Up she rose on the top of another roller. I 
made out the signal clearly, that second time, and saw 
that it was rigged half-mast high. 

“Rames,” says I, “it’s a signal of distress. Pass the 
word forward to keep her before the sea, and no more. 
We must get the Long-boat within hailing distance of us, 
as soon as possible.” 

I dropped down into my old place at the tiller without 
another word — for the thought went through me like a 
knife that something had happened to Captain Raveader. 
I should consider myself unworthy to write another line 
of this statement, if I had not made up my mind to speak 
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — 
and I must, therefore, confess plainly that now, for the first 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


151 


tinu', my heart sank within me. This weakness on my 
l)art was produced in some degree, as I take it, by the 
exhausting effects of previous anxiety and grief. 

Our provisions — if I may give that name to what we 
had left — were reduced to the rind of one lemon and about 
a couple of handsfull of coffee-berries. Besides these great 
distresses, caused by the death, the danger, and the suffer- 
ing among my crew and passengers, I had had a little 
distress of my own to shake me still more, in the death 
of the child whom I had got to be very fond of on the 
voyage out — so fond that I was secretly a little jealous of 
her being taken in the T.(Ong-boat instead of mine when 
the ship foundered. It used to be a great comfort to me, 
and I think to those with me also, after we had seen the 
last of the Golden Mary, to see the Golden Lucy, held 
up by the men in the Long-boat, when the weather allowed 
it, as the best and brightest sight they had to show. She 
looked, at the distance we saw her from, almost like a 
little white bird in the air. To miss her for the first time, 
when the weather lulled a little again, and we all looked 
out for our white bird and looked in vain, was a sore 
disappointment. To see the men’s heads bowed down and 
the captain’s hand pointing into the sea when we hailed 
the Long-boat, a few days after, gave me as heavy a shock 
and as sharp a pang of heartache to bear as ever I remem- 
ber suffering in all my life. I only mention these things 
to show that if I did give way a little at first, under the dread 
that our captain was lost to us, it was not without having 
been a good deal shaken beforehand by more trials of one 
sort or another than often fall to one man’s share. 

I had got over the choking in my throat with the helj) 
of a drop of water, and had steadied my mind again so as 
to be prepared against the worst, when I heard the hail 
(Lord help the poor fellows, how weak it sounded!) — 

“Surf -boat, ahoy!’’ 

I looked up, and there were our companions in mis- 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN IMARY 


fortune tossing abreast of us; not so near that we could 
make out the features of any of them, but near enough, 
with some exertion for people in our condition, to make 
their voices heard in the intervals when the wind was 
5 weakest. 

I answered the hail, and waited a bit, and heard nothing, 
and then sung out the captain’s name. The voice that 
replied did not sound like his; the words that reached us 
were : 

10 “Chief mate wanted on board!” 

Every man of my crew knew what that meant as well 
as I did. As second officer in command, there could be 
but one reason for wanting me on board the Long-boat. 
A groan went all round us, and my men looked darkly 
15 in each other’s faces, and whispered under their breaths: 

“The captain is dead!” 

I commanded them to be silent, and not to make too 
sure of bad news, at such a pass as things had now come 
to with us. Then, hailing the Long-boat, I signified that I 
20 was ready to go on board when the ^veather would let me 
— stopped a bit to draw a good long breath — and then 
called out as loud as I could the dreadful question: 

“Is the captain dead?” 

The black figures of three or four men in the after-part 
25 of the liong-boat all stooped down together as my voice 
reached them. They were lost to view for about a minute ; 
then appeared again — one man among them was held 
up on his feet by the rest, and he hailed back the blessed 
words (a very faint hope went a very long way with people 
30 in our desperate situation): “Not yet!” 

The relief felt by me, and by all with me, when we 
knew that our captain, though unfitted for duty, was not 
lost to us, it is not in words — at least, not in such words 
as a man like me can command — to express. 1 did my 
35 best to cheer the men by telling them what a good sign 
it was that we were not as badly off yet as we had feared; 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN ]\IARY 


153 


and then communicated what instructions I had to give, 
to William Rames, who was to be left in command in my 
place when I took charge of the Long-boat. After that, 
there was nothing to be done, but to wait for the chance 
of the wind dropping at sunset, and the sea going down 
afterwards, so as to enable our weak crews to lay the two 
boats alongside of each other, without undue risk — or, 
to put it plainer, without saddling ourselves with the 
necessity for any extraordinary exertion of strength or 
skill. Both the one and the other had now been starved 
out of us for days and days together. 

At sunset the wind suddenly dropped, but the sea, which 
had been running high for so long a time past, took hours 
after that before it showed any signs of getting to rest. 
The moon was shining, the sky was wonderfully clear, and 
it could not have been, according to my calculations, far 
off midnight, when the long, slow, regular swell of the 
calming ocean fairly set in, and I took the responsibility of 
lessening the distance between the Long-boat and our- 
selves. 

It was, I dare say, a delusion of mine; but I thought 1 
had never seen the moon shine so white and ghastly any- 
where, either at sea or on land, as she shone that night 
while we were approaching our companions in misery. 
When there was not much more than a boat’s length 
between us, and the white light streamed cold and clear 
over all our faces, both crews rested on their oars with 
one great shudder, and stared over the gunwale of either 
boat, panic-stricken at the first sight of each other. 

“Any lives lost among you?” I asked, in the midst of 
that frightful silence. 

The men in the Long-boat huddled together like sheep 
at the sound of my voice. 

“None yet, but the child, thanks be to Godl” answered 
one among them. 

And at the sound of his voice, all my men shrank 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEX MARY 


together like the men in the Long-boat. I was afraid 
to let the horror produced by our first meeting at close 
quarters after the dreadful changes that wet, cold, and 
famine had produced, last one moment longer than could 
be helped ; so, without giving time for any more questions 
and answers, I commanded the men to lay the two boats 
close alongside of each other. When I rose up and 
committed the tiller to the hands of Raines, all my poor 
fellows raised their white faces imploringly to mine. 
“Don’t leave us, sir,” they said, “don’t leave us.” “I 
leave you,” says I, “under the command and the guidance 
of 'Sh. William Rames, as good a sailor as I am, and as 
trusty and kind a man as ever stepped. Do your duty 
by him, as you have done it by me; and remember to the 
last, that while there is life there is hope. God bless and 
help you all !” With those words I collected what strength 
1 had left, and caught at two arms that were held out to 
me, and so got from the stern-sheets of one boat into the 
stern-sheets of the other. 

“Mind where you step, sir,” whispered one of the men 
who had helped me into the Long-boat. I looked down 
as he spoke. Three figures were huddled up below me, 
with the moonshine falling on them in ragged streaks 
through the gaps between the men standing or sitting 
above them. The first face I made out was the face of 
Miss Coleshaw, her e-yes were wide open and fixed on me. 
She seemed still to keep her senses, and, by the alternate 
parting and closing of her lips, to be trying to speak, 
but I could not hear that she uttered a single word. On 
her shoulder rested the head of INIrs. Atherfield. The 
mother of our poor little Golden Imcy must, I think, 
have been dreaming of the child she' had lost; for there 
was a faint smile just ruffling the white stillness of her face, 
when 1 first saw it turned upward, with peaceful closed 
eyes towards the heavens. From her, I looked down 
a little, and there, with his head on her lap, and with 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


1.35 


one of her hands resting tenderly on his cheek — there lay 
the captain, to whose help and guidance, up to this miser- 
able time, we had never looked in vain, — there, worn out 
at last in our service, and for our sakes, lay the best and 
bravest man of all our company. I stole my hand in 5 
gently through his clothes and laid it on his heart, and 
felt a little feeble warmth over it, though my cold dulled 
touch could not detect even the faintest beating. The two 
men in the stern-sheets with me, noticing what I was 
doing— knowing I loved him like a brother — and seeing, lo 
I suppose, more distress in my face than I myself was 
conscious of its showing, lost command over themselves 
altogether, and burst into a piteous moaning, sobbing 
lamentation over him. One of the two drew aside a 
jacket from his feet, and showed me that they were bare, 15 
except where a wet, ragged strip of stocking still clung 
to one of them. When the ship struck the Iceberg, he 
had run on deck leaving his shoes in his cabin. All 
through the voyage in the boat his feet had been unpro- 
tected; and not a soul had discovered it until he dropped! 20 
As long as he could keep his eyes open, the very look of 
them had cheered the men, and comforted and upheld 
the women. Not one living creature in the boat, with 
any sense about him, but had felt the good influence of 
that brave man in one way or another. Not one but had 25 
heard him, over and over again, give the credit to others 
which was due only to himself; praising this man for 
patience, and thanking that man for help, when the 
patience and the help had really and truly, as to the best 
part or both, come only from him. All this, and mucli 30 
more, I heard pouring confusedly from the men’s li]>s 
while they crouched down, sobbing and crying over 
their commander, and wrapping the jacket as warmly 
and tenderly as they could over his cold feet. It went 
to my heart to check them ; but I knew that if this lament- 35 
ing spirit spread any further, all chance of keeping alight 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


any last sparks of hope and resolution among the boat’s 
company would be lost for ever. Accordingly I sent 
them to their places, spoke a few encouraging words to the 
men forward, promising to serve out, when the morning 
5 came, as much as I dared, of any eatable thing left in the 
lockers; called to Rames, in my old boat, to keep as near 
us as he safely could; drew the garments and coverings 
of the two poor suffering women more closely about them ; 
and, with a secret prayer to be directed for the best in 
10 bearing the awful responsibility now laid on my shoulders 
took my captain’s vacant place at the helm of the Long- 
boat. 

This, as well as I can tell it, is the full and true account 
of how I came to be placed in charge of the lost passengers 
15 and crew of the Golden Mary, on the morning of the 
twenty-seventh day after the ship struck the Iceberg, and 
foundered at sea. 


Chapter II 


THE DELIVERANCE 

When the sun rose on the twenty-seventh day of our 
calamity, the first question that I secretly asked myself 
was, How many more mornings will the stoutest of us 
live to see? I had kept count, ever since we took to the 
boats, of the days of the week; and I knew that we had 5 
now arrived at anotlier Thursday. Judging by my own 
sensations (and I believe I had as much strength left as 
the best man among us), I came to the conclusion that, 
unless the mercy of Providence interposed to effect our 
deliverance, not one of our company could hope to see lo 
another morning after the morning of Sunday. 

Two discoveries that I made — after redeeming my 
promise overnight, to serve out with the morning whatever 
eatable thing I could find — helped to confirm me in my 
gloomy view of our future prospects. In the first place, 15 
when the few coffee-berries left, together with a small 
allowance of water, had been shared all round, I found 
on examining the lockers that not one grain of provision 
remained, fore or aft, in any part of the boat, and that 
our stock of fresh water was reduced to not much more 20 
than would fill a wine-bottle. In the second place, after 
the berries had been shared, and the water equally divided, 

I noticed that the sustenance thus administered produced 
no effect whatever, even of the m«st momentary kind, 
in raising the spirits of the passengers (excepting in one 23 
case) or in rallying the strength of the crew. The ex- 
ception was Mr. Rarx. This tough and greedy old sinner 
seemed to wake up from the trance he had lain in so long, 

157 


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THE AVRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


when the smell of the berries and Avater AA'as under his nose. 
He sAvalloAved his share Avith a gulp that many a younger 
and better man in the boat might haAe envied; and AA^ent 
maundering on to himself aftei’Avards, as if he had got 
a new lease of life. He fancied noAv that he Avas digging 
a gold-mine, all by himself, and going doAvn bodily 
straight through the earth at the rate of thirty or forty 
miles an hour. “Leave me alone,” says he, “leave me 
alone. The lower I go, the richer I get. DoA\m I go! — 
down, down, down, doAvn, till I burst out at the other end 
of the Avorld in a shoAA^er of gold !” So he went on, kicking 
feebly Avith his heels from time to time against the bottom 
of the boat. 

But, as for all the rest, it Avas a pitiful and dreadful 
sight to see of how little use their last shadow of a meal 
Avas to them. I myself attended, before anybody else Avas 
served, to the tAVo poor Avomen. Miss Coleshaw shook 
her head faintly, and pointed to her throat, when I offered 
her the few berries that fell to her share. I made a shift 
to crush them up fine and mix them Avith a little Avater, 
and got her to swalloAv that miserable drop of drink Avith 
the greatest difficulty. AYhen it Avas doAvn there came no 
change for the better over her face. Nor did she recover, 
for so much as a moment, the capacity to speak, even 
in a whisper. I next tried Mrs. Atherfield. It Avas hard 
to Avake her out of the half-sAvooning, half-sleeping con- 
dition in Avhich she lay, — and harder still to get her to open 
her lips when I put the tin-cup to them. When I had 
at last prevailed on her to SAvalloAv her allowance, she 
shut her eyes again, and fell back into her old position. 
I saw her lips moving; and, putting my ear close to them, 
caught some of the Avords she Avas murmuring to herself. 
She Avas still dreaming of the Golden Lucy. She and the 
child were Avalking someAvhere by the banks of a lake, 
at the time the buttercups are out. The Golden Lucy 
Avas gathering the buttercups, and making herself a Avatch- 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


159 • 


chain out of them, in imitation of the chain that her 
mother wore. They were carrying a little basket with 
them, and were going to dine together in a great hollow 
tree growing on the banks of the lake. To get this pretty 
picture painted on one’s mind as I got it, while listening 5 
to the poor mother’s broken words, and then to look up ' 
at the haggard faces of the men in the boat, and at the 
wild ocean rolling all round us, was such a change from 
fancy to reality as it has fallen, I hope, to few men’s lots 
to ex]:)erience. la 

My next thought, when I had done my best for the 
women, was for the captain. I was free to risk losing my 
own share of water, if I pleased, so I tried, before tasting 
it myself, to get a little between his lips ; but his teeth were 
fast clenched, And I had neither strength nor skill to open i 5 
them. The faint warmth still remained, thank God, over 
his heart — but, in ail other respects he lay beneath us like a 
dead man. In covering him up again as comfortably as 
I could, I found a bit of paper crunched in one of his hands, 
and took it out. There was some writing on it, but not a 20 
word was readable. I suppose, poor fellow, that he had 
been trying to write some last instructions for me, just 
before he dropped at his post. If they had been ever so 
easy to read, they would have been of no use now. To 
follow instructions we must have had some power to shape 25 
the boat’s course in a given direction — and this, which we ' 
had been gradually losing for some days past, we had now 
lost altogether. 

I had hoped that the serving out of the refreshment 
would have put a little modicum of strength into the arms 3 o 
of the men at the oars; but, as I have hinted, this hope 
turned out to be perfectly fruitless. Our last mockery of 
a meal, which had done nothing for the passengers, did 
nothing either for the crew — except to aggravate the pangs 
of hunger in the men who were still strong enough to feel 35 
them. While the weather held moderate, it was not of 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


much consequence if one or two of the rowers kept drop- 
ping, in turn, into a kind of faint sleep over^ their oars. 
But if it came on to blow again (and we could expect noth- 
ing else in those seas and at that time of the year), how was 
5 I to steer, when the' blades of the oars were out of the water 
• ten times as often as they were in ? The lives which we had 
undergone such suft'ering to preserve would have been lost 
in an instant by the swamping of the boat, if the wind had 
risen on the morning of Thursday, and had caught us 
10 trying to row any longer. 

Feeling this, I resolved, while the weather held moder- 
ately fine, to hoist the best substitute for a sail that we 
could produce, and to drive before the wind, on the chance 
(the last we had hope for) of a ship picking us up. We had 
15 only continued to use the oars up to this time in order to 
keep the course which the captain had pointed out as 
likeliest to bring us near the land. Sailing had been out 
of the question from the first, the masts and suits of sails 
• belonging to each boat having been out of them at the 
20 time of the wreck, and having gone down with the ship. 
This was an accident which there was no need to deplore, 
for we were too crowded from the first to admit of handling 
the boats properly, under their regular press of sail, in any- 
thing like rough weather. 

25 Having made up my mind on what it was necessary to do 
I addressed the men, and told them that any notion of 
holding longer on our course with the oars was manifestly 
out of the question, and dangerous to all on board, as their 
own common sense might tell them, in the state to which 
30 the stoutest arms among us were now reduced. They 
looked round on each other as I said that, each man 
seeming to think his neighbour weaker than himself. 1 
went on, and told them that we must take advantage of our 
present glimpse of moderate weather, and hoist the best 
85 sail we could set up, and drive before the wind, in the hope 
that it might please God to direct us in the way of some 


THE WRECK 01' THE GOLDEN MARY 


161 


ship before it was too late. “Our only chance, my men,’' 

1 said, in conclusion, “is the chance of being picked up; 
and in these desolate seas one point of the compass is just 
as likely a point for our necessities as another. Half of 
you keep the boat before the sea, the other half bring out* 5 
your knives, and do as I tell you.” The prospect of being 
relieved from the oars struck the wandering attention of 
the men directly; and they said, “Ay, ay, sir!” with some- 
thing like a faint reflection of their former readiness, when 
the good ship was under their feet, and the mess-cans were lo 
filled with plenty of wholesome food. 

Thanks to Captain Ravender’s forethought in provid- 
ing both boats with a coil of rope, we had our lashings, 
and the means of making what rigging was wanted, ready 
to hand. One of the oars was made fast to the thwart, and 1.5 
well stayed fore and aft, for a mast. A large pilot-coat 
that I wore was spread; enough of sail for us. The only 
difficulty that puzzled me was occasioned by the necessity 
of making a yard. The men tried to tear up one of the 
thwarts, but were not strong enough. My own knife had 20 
been broken in the attempt to split a bit of plank for them, 
and I was almost at my wit's end, when I luckily thought 
of searching the captain’s pockets for his knife. I found 
it — a fine large knife of Sheffield manufacture, with plenty 
of blades, and a small saw among them. With this we 2 ^ 
made a shift to saw off about a third of another oar; and 
then the difficulty was conciuered; and we got my pilot- 
coat hoisted on our jury-mast, and rigged it as nigh as we 
could to the fashion of a lug-sail. 

I had looked anxiously towards the Surf-boat, while we :{0 
were rigging our mast, and observed, with a feeling of 
great relief, that the men in her — as soon as they discov- 
ered what w’e w’ere about — were wise enough to follow 
our example. They got on faster than we did; being less 
put to it for room to turn round in. We set our sails as :i5 
nearly as possible about the same 41100 ; and it w^as well for 


1G2 


THE ^^HECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


both boats that we finished our work when we did. At 
noon the wind began to rise again to a stiff breeze, which 
soon knocked up a heavy, tumbling sea. We drove 
before it in a direction North by East, keeping wonderfully 
s dry, considering all things. The mast stood well; and 
the sail, small as it was, did good service in steadying the 
boat and lifting her easily over the seas. I felt the cold 
after the loss of my coat, but not so badly as I had feared ; 
for the two men who were with me in the stern-sheets, 
10 sat as close as they could on either side of me, and helped 
with the warmth of their own bodies to keep the warmth in 
mine. Forward, I told off* half a dozen of the most trust- 
worthy of the men who could still muster strength enough 
to keep their eyes open, to set a watch, turn and turn about, 
15 on our frail rigging. The wind was steadily increasing; 
and if any accident happened to our mast the chances 
were that the boat would broach-to, and that every one of 
us would go to the bottom. 

So we drove on — all through that day — sometimes 
20 catching sight of the Surf-boat a little ahead of us — some- 
times losing her altogether in the scud. How little and 
frail how very different to the kind of boat that I had 
expected to see, she looked to my eyes now that I was out 
of her, and saw what she showed like on the waters for the 
25 first time! But to return to the Long-boat. The w’atch 
on the rigging was relieved every two hours, and at the 
same regular periods all the brightest eyes left amongst 
us looked out for the smallest vestige of a sail in view, and 
looked in vain. Among the passengers, nothing happened 
30 in the way of a change — except that Miss Coleshaw 
seemed to grow fainter, and that Mrs. Atherfield got rest- 
less, as if she were waking out of her long dream about 
the Golden Lucy. 

It got on towards sunset. The wind was rising to half a 
35 gale. The clouds, which had been heavy all over the firm- 
ament since noon, were lifting to the westward, and leav- 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


163 


ing there, over the horizon line of the ocean, a long strip 
of clear, pale, greenish sky, overhung by a cloud-bank, 
whose ragged edges were tipped with burning crimson by 
the sun. I did not like the look of the night, and, keep- 
ing where I was, in the forward part of the boat, I helped 
the men to ease the strain off our mast, by lowering the 
yard a little and taking a pull on the sheet, so as to present 
to the wind a smaller surface even of our small sail. Not- 
ing the wild look of the weather, and the precautions we 
were taking against the chance of a gale rising in the 
night — and being, furthermore, as I believe, staggered 
in their minds by the death that had taken place among 
them — three of the passengers struggled up in the bottom 
of the boat, clasped their arms around me as if they were 
drowning men already, and hoarsely clamoured for a last 
drink of water, before the storm rose and sent us all to 
the bottom. 

“Water you shall have,” I said, “when I think the time 
has come to serve it out. The time has not come yet.” 

“Water, pray I” they all three groaned together. Two 
more passengers who were asleep, woke up, and joined the 
cry. 

“Silence!” I said. “There are not two spoonfuls of 
fresh water left for each man in the boat. I shall wait 
three hours more for the chance of rain before I serve that 
out. Silence, and drop back to your places 1” 

They let go of me, but clamoured weakly for water still ; 
and, this time, the voices of some of the crew joined them. 
At this moment, to my great alarm (for I thought they were 
going mad and turning violent against me), I was seized 
round the neck by one of the men, who had been standing 
up, holding on by the mast, and looking out steadily to the 
the westward. 

I raised my right hand to free myself; but before I 
touched him, the sight of the man’s face close to mine 
made me drop my arm again. There was a speechless, 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


breathless, frantic joy in it, that made all the blood in my 
veins stand still in a moment. 

“Out with it!” I said. “Man alive, out with it, for 
God’s sake!” 

5 His breath beat on my cheek in hot, quick, heavy gasps; 
but he could not utter a word. For a moment he let go of 
the mast (tightening his hold on me with the other arm) 
and pointed out westward — then slid heavily down on to 
the thwart behind us. 

10 I looked westward, and saw that one of the two trust- 
worthy men whom I had left at the helm was on his feet 
looking out westward, too. As the boat rose, I fixed my 
eyes on the strip of clear greenish sky in the west, and on 
the bright line of the sea just under it. The boat dipped 
15 again before I could see anything. I squeezed my eyelids 
together to get the water out of them, and when we rose 
again looked straight into the middle of the bright sea- 
line. ]\Iy heart bounded as if it would choke me — my 
tongue felt like a cinder in my mouth — my knees gave 
20 way under me — I dropped down on to the thwart, and 
sobbed out, with a great effort, as if I had been dumb for 
weeks before, and had only that instant found my speech: 

“A sail! a sail!” 

The words were instantly echoed by the man in the stern- 
25 sheets. 

“Sail, ho!” he screeches out, turning round on us, and 
swinging his arms about his head like a madman. 

This made three of our company who had seen the ship 
already, and that one fact was sufficient to remove all 
30 dread lest our eyes might have been deceiving us. The 
great fear now was, not that we were deluded, but that we 
might come to some serious harm through the excess of 
joy among the people; that is to say, among such of the 
people as still had the sense to feel and the strength to 
35 express what they felt. I must record in my own justifi- 
cation, after confessing that I lost command over myself 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 165 

altogether on the discovery of the sail, that I was the first 
who set the example of self-control. I was in a manner 
forced to this by the crew frantically entreating me to lay- 
to until we could make out what course the ship was steer- 
ing — a proceeding which, with the sea then running, with 
the heavy lading of the. boat, and with such feeble substi- 
tutes for mast and sail as we possessed, must have been 
attended with total destruction to us all. I tried to remind 
the men of this, but they were in such a transport — hugging 
each other round the neck, and crying and laughing all in 
a breath — that they were not fit to listen to reason. Ac- 
cordingly, I myself went to the helm again, and chose 
the steadiest of my two men in the after-part of the boat: 
as a guard over the sheet, with instructions to use force 
if necessary, towards any one who stretched out so much as 
a finger to it. The wind was rising every minute, and we 
had nothing for it but to scud, and be thankful to God’s 
mercy that we had sea-room to do it in. 

“It will be dark in an hour’s time, sir,” says the man left 
along with me when I took the helm again. “We have no 
light to show. The ship will pass us in the night. Lay-to, 
sir! For the love of Heaven, give us all a chance, and lay- 
to!” says he, and goes down on his knees before me, 
wringing his hands. 

“Lay-to!” says I. “Lay-to, under a coat! Lay-to, in a 
boat like this, with the wind getting up to a gale ! A seaman 
like you talk in that way ! Who have I got along here witli 
me? Sailors who know their craft, or a pack of ’long- 
shore lubbers, who ought to be turned adrift in a ferry-boat 
on a pond?” My heart was heavy enough, God knows, 
but I spoke out as loud as I could, in that light way, to try 
and shame the men back to their proper senses. I suc- 
ceeded at least in restoring silence; and that was some- 
thing in such a condition as ours. 

]\Iy next anxiety was to know if the men in the Surf-boat 
liad sighted the sail to the westward. She was still driv- 


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.16G 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEX IMARY 


ing ahead of us, and the first time I saw her rise on the 
waves, I made out a signal on board — a strip of cloth fastened 
to a boat-hook. I ordered the man by my side to return it 
with his jacket tied on to the end of the oar; being anxious 
to see whether his agitation had calmed down and left him 
fit for his duty again. He followed my direction steadily 
and when he got his jacket on again, asked me to pardon 
him for losing his self-command, in a quiet, altered voice. 

I shook hands with him, and gave him the hHm, in 
proof that my confidence was restored ; then stood up and 
turned my face to the westward once again. I looked long 
into the belt of clear sky, which was narrowing already as 
the cloud-bank above sank over it. I looked with all my 
heart and soul and strength. It was only when my eyes 
could stand the strain on them no longer, that I gave in, and 
sat down again by the tiller. If I had not been supported 
by a firm trust in the mercy of Providence, which had pre- 
served us thus far, I am afraid I should have abandoned 
myself at that trying time to downright hopeless, speech- 
less despair. 

It would not express much to any but seafaring readers 
if I mentioned the number of leagues off that I considered 
the ship to be. I shall give a better idea of the terrible dis- 
tance there was between us, when I say that no landsman’s 
eye could have made her out at all, and that none of us 
sailors could have seen her but for the bright opening in 
the sky, which made even a speck on the waters visible to 
a mariner’s experienced sight all that weary way off. 
AVhen I have said this, I have said enough to render it 
])lain to every man’s understanding that it was a sheer 
impossibility to make out what course the ship was steering 
seeing that we had no chance of keeping her in view at that 
closing time of day for more than another half-hour, at 
most. There she was, astern to leeward of us; and here 
were we, driving for our lives before the wind, with any 
means of kindling a light that we might have possessed on 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


167 


leaving our ship wetted through long ago — with no guns 
to fire as signals of distress in the darkness — and with no 
choice, if the wind shifted, but still to scud in any direction 
in which it might please to drive us. Supposing, even at 
the best, that the ship was steering on our course, and 
would overhaul us in the night, what chance had we of 
making our position known to her in the darkness ? Truly 
look at it anyhow we might from our poor mortal point of 
view, our prospect of deliverance seemed to be of the most 
utterly hopeless kind that it is possible to conceive. 

The men felt this bitterly, as the cloud-bank dropped to 
the verge of the waters, and the sun set redly behind it. 
The moaning and lamenting among them was miserable 
to hear, when the last speck and phantom of the ship had 
vanished from view. Some few still swore they saw her 
when there was hardly a flicker of light left in the west, and 
only gave up looking out, and dropped down in the boat, 
at my express orders. I charged them all solemnly to set 
an example of courage to the passengers, and to trust the 
rest to the infinite wisdom and mercy of the Creator of us all. 
Some murmured, some fell to repeating scraps out of the 
Bible and Prayer-Book, some wandered again in their 
minds. This went on till the darkness gathered — then a 
great hush of silence fell drearily over passengers and crew ; 
and the weaves and the wind hissed and howled about us, 
as if we were tossing in the midst of them, a boat-load of 
corpses already ! 

Twice in the fore-part of the night the clouds overhead 
parted for a little, and let the blessed moonlight down upon 
us. On the first of those occasions, I myself served out the 
last drops of fresh water we had left. The two women — 
poor suffering creatures! — were past drinking. Miss 
Coleshaw shivered a little when I moistened her lips with 
the water; and Mrs. Atherfield, when I did the same for 
her, drew her breath with a faint, fluttering sigh, which was 
just enough to show that she was not dead yet. The cap- 


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THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


tain still lay as he had lain ever since I got on board the 
boat. The others, both passengers and crew, managed 
for the most part to swallow their share of the water — the 
men being just sufficiently roused by it to get up on their 
5 knees, while the moonlight lasted, and look about wildly | 
over the ocean for a chance of seeing the ship again. 
When the clouds gathered once more, they crouched back 
in their places with a long groan of despair. Hearing that, 
and dreading the effect of the pitchy darkness (to say noth- 
10 ing of the fierce wind and sea) on their sinking spirits, I 
resolved to combat their despondency, if it were still pos- 
sible to contend against it, by giving them something to 
do. First telling them that no man could say at what time 
of the night the ship (in case she was steering our course) 

15 might forge ahead of us, or how near she might be when 
she passed, I recommended that all who had the strength 
should join their voices at regular intervals, and shout their 
loudest when the boat rose highest on the waves, on the 
chance of that cry of distress being borne by the wind with- 
20 in hearing of the watch on board the ship. It is unneces- 
sary to say that I knew well how near it was to an absolute 
impossibility that this last feeble exertion on our parts 
could lead to any result. I only proposed it because I was 
driven to the end of my resources to keep up the faint- 
S5 est flicker of spirit mong the men. They received my 
proposal with more warmth and readiness than I had 
ventured, in their hopeless state, to expect from them. Up 
to the turn of midnight they resolutely raised their voices 
with me, at intervals of from five to ten minutes, whenever 
30 the boat was tossed highest on the waves. The wind 
seemed to whirl our weak cries savagely out of our mouths 
almost before we could utter them. I, sitting astern in the 
boat, only heard them, as it seemed, for something like an 
instant of time. But even that was enough to make me - 
ss creep all over — the cry was so forlorn and fearful. Of 
all the dreadful sounds I had heard since the first striking of 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


169 


the ship, that shrill wail of despair — rising on the wa\e- 
tops, one moment; whirled away the next, into the black 
night — was the most frightful that entered my ears. There 
are times, even now, when it seems to be ringing in them 
still. 5 

Whether our first gleam of moonshine fell upon old Mr. 
Rarx, while he was sleeping, and helped to upset his weak 
brains altogether, is more than I can say. But, for some 
reason or other, before the clouds parted and let the light 
down on us for the second time, and while we were driv- lo 
ing along awfully through the blackest of the night, he 
stirred in his place, and began rambling and raving again 
more vehemently than ever. To hear him now, — that is 
to say, as well as I could hear him for the wind, — he was 
still down in his gold-mine; but was laden so heavy with 15 
his precious metal that he could not get out, and was in 
mortal peril of being drowned by the water rising in the 
bottom of the shaft. So far, his maundering attracted my 
attention disagreeably, and did no more. But when he 
began — if I may say so — to take the name of the dear 20 
little dead child in vain, and to mix her up with himself 
and his miserly greed of gain, I got angry and called to 
the men forward to give him a shake and make him 
hold his tongue. Whether any of them obeyed or not, I 
don’t know — Mr. Rarx went on raving louder than ever. 25 
The shrill wind was now hardly more shrill, than he. 

He swore he saw the white frock of our poor little lost pet 
fluttering in the daylight, at the top of the mine, and he 
screamed out to her in a great fright that the gold was 
heavy, and the water rising fast, and that she must come 30 
down as quick as lightning if she meant to be in time to 
help them. T called again angrily to the men to silence 
him; and just as I did so, the clouds began to part for the 
second time, and the white tip of the moon grew visible. 

“There she is!” screeches Mr. Rarx; and I saw him by 36 
the faint light, scramble on his knees in the bottom of the 


170 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


boat, and wave a ragged old handkerchief up at the moon. 

“Pull him down!” I called out. “Down with him; and 
tie his arms and legs !” 

Of the men who could still move about, not one paid 
® any attention to me. They were all upon their knees 
again, looking out in the strengthening moonlight for a 
sight of the ship. 

“Quick, Golden Lucy!” screams Mr. Rarx, and creeps 
under the thwarts right forward into the bows of the boat. j 
ao “Quick! my darling, my beauty, quick! The gold is 
heavy, and the water rises fast ! Come down and save me. 
Golden Lucy! Let all the rest of the world drown, and 
save me! Me! me! me! me!” 

He shouted these last words out at the top of his cracked, 

15 croaking voice, and got on his feet, as I conjectured (for 
the coat we had spread for a sail now hid him from me) 
in the bows of the boat. Not one of the crew so much as 
looked round at him, so eagerly were their eyes seeking 
for the ship. The man sitting by me was sunk in a deep 
;30 sleep. If I had left the helm for a moment in that wind 
and sea, it would have been the death of every soul of 
us. I shouted desperately to the raving wretch to sit 
down. A screech that seemed to cut the very wdnd in 
two answered me. A huge wave tossed the boat’s head 
35 up wildly at the same moment. I looked aside to leeward 
as the w^ash of the great roller swept by us, gleaming of 
a lurid, bluish wdiite in the moonbeams; I looked and 
saw, in one second of time, the face of Mr. Rarx rush past 
on the wave, with the foam seething in his hair and the 
30 moon shining in his eyes. Before I could draw' my breath 
he was a hundred yards astern of us, and the night and 
the sea had sw'allow'ed him up and had hid his secret, 
which he had kept all the voyage, from our mortal curiosity, 
for ever. 

35 “He’s gone! he’s drowned!” I shouted to the men 
forward. 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN HARY 


171 


None of th^m took any notice; none of them left off 
looking out over the ocean for a sight of the ship. Nothing 
that I could say on the subject of our situation at that 
fearful time can, in my opinion, give such an idea of the 
extremity and the frightfulness of it, as the relation of 5 
this one fact. I leave it to speak by itself the sad and 
shocking truth, and pass on gladly to the telling of what 
happened next, at a later hour of the night. 

After the clouds had shut out the moon again, the 
wind dropped a little and shifted a point or two, so as to la 
shape our course nearer to the eastward. How the hours 
passed after that, till the dawn came, is more than I can 
tell. The nearer the time of daylight approached the 
more completely everything seemed to drop out of my 
mind, except the one thought of where the ship we had seen is 
in the evening might be, when we looked for her with the 
morning light. 

It came at last — that grey, quiet light which was to end 
all our uncertainty; which was to show us if we were 
saved, or to warn us if we were to prepare for death. 20 
With the first streak in the east, every one of the boat’s 
company, except the sleeping and the senseless, roused 
up and looked out in breathless silence upon the sea. 
Slowly and slowly the daylight strengthened, and the 
darkness rolled off farther and farther before it over the 25 
face of the waters. The first pale flush of the sun flew 
trembling along the paths of light broken through the 
grey wastes of the eastern clouds. We could look clearly — 
we could see far; and there, ahead of us — O! merciful, 
bountiful providence of God! — there was the ship! 30 

I have honestly owned the truth, and confessed to the 
human infirmity under suffering of myself, my passengers, 
and my crew. I have earned, therefore, as I would fain 
hope, the right to record it to the credit of all, that the 
men, the moment they set eyes on the ship, poured out 35 
their whole heart in humble thanksgiving to the Divine 


172 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


IVIercy which had saved them from the very jaws of death. 
They did not wait for me to bid them do this; they did 
it of their ©wn accord, in their own language, fervently, 
earnestly, with one will and one heart. 

5 We had hardly made the ship out — a fine brigantine, 
hoisting English colours — before we observed that her 
crew suddenly hove her up in the wind. At first we were 
at a loss to undertand this; but as we drew nearer, we 
discovered that she was getting the Surf-boat (which had 
10 kept ahead of us all through the night) alongside of her, 
under the lee bow. My men tried to cheer when they saw 
their companions in safety, but their weak cries died away 
in tears and sobbing. 

In another half-hour we, too, were alongside of the 
brigantine. 

From this point I recollect nothing very distinctly. 
I remember faintly many loud voices and eager faces; — 
I remember fresh strong willing fellows, with a colour in 
their cheeks, and a smartness in their movements that 
20 seemed quite preternatural to me at that time, hanging 
over us in the rigging of the brigantine, and dropping 
down from her sides into our boat; — I remember trying 
with my feeble hands to help them in the difficult and 
perilous task of getting the two poor women and the 
25 captain on board; — I remember one dark hairy giant 
of a man swearing that it was enough to break his heart, 
and catching me in his arms like a child — and from that 
moment I remember nothing more with the slightest 
certainty for over a week of time. 

80 When I came to my own senses again, in my cot on 
board the brigantine my first inquiries were naturally 
for my fellow-sufferers. Two — a passenger in the Long- 
boat, and one of the crew of the Surf -boat — had sunk in 
spite of ail the care that could be taken of them. The 
35 rest were likely, with time and attention, to recover. 
Of those who have been particularly mentioned in this 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


173 


narrative, Mrs. Atherfield had shown signs of rallying 
the soonest; Miss Coleshaw, who had held out longer 
against exhaustion, was now the slower to recover. Cap- 
tain Ravender, though slowly mending, was still not able 
to speak or to move in his cot without help. The sacrifices 5 
for us all which this good man had so nobly undergone, 
not only in the boat, but before that, when he had deprived 
himself of his natural rest on the dark nights that preceded 
the wreck of the Golden iVIary, had sadly undermined his 
natural strength of constitution. He, the heartiest of all, lo 
when Ave sailed from England, was now, through his 
unwearying devotion to his duty and to us, the last to 
recover, the longest to linger beUveen life and death. 

My next questions (when they helped me on deck to 
get my first blessed breath of fresh air) related to the 
vessel that had saved us. She was bound to the Columbia 
River — a long way to the northward of the port for which 
Ave had sailed in the Golden JMary. Most providentially 
for us, shortly after we had lost sight of the brigantine 
in the shades of the evening, she had been caught in a so 
squall, and had sprung her foretopmast badly. This 
accident had obliged them to lay-to for some hours, Avhile 
they did their best to secure the spar, and had Avarned 
them, AARen they continued on their course, to keep the^ 
ship under easy sail through the night. But for this 25 
circumstance Ave must, in all human probability, have 
been too far astern when the morning daAvned, to have had 
the slightest chance of being discovered. 

Excepting ahvays some of the stoutest of our men, 
the next of the I^ong-boat’s company Avho Avas helped on 30 
deck Avas Mrs. Atherfield. Poor soul! when she and I 
first looked at each other, I could see that her heart AV'ent 
back to the early days of our voyage, when the Golden 
Lucy and I used to have our game of hide-and-seek 
round the mast. She squeezed my hand as hard as she 85 
could Avith her Avasted trembling fingers, and looked up 


174 


THE wkECK of the GOLDEN MARY 


piteously in my face, as if she would like to speak to little 
Lucy’s playfellow, but dared not trust herself — then 
turned away quickly and laid her head against the bul- 
warks, and looked out upon the desolate sea that was 
5 nothing to her now but her darling’s grave. I was better 
pleased when I saw her later in the day, sitting by Captain 
Lavender’s cot; for she seemed to take comfort in nursing 
him. Miss Coleshaw soon afterwards got strong enough 
to relieve her at this duty; and, between them, they did 
10 the captain such a w’orld of good, both in body and spirit, 
that he also got strong enough before long to come on 
deck, and to thank me, in his old generous self-forgetful 
way, for having done my duty — the duty which I had 
learnt how to do by his example. 

Hearing what our destination had been when we sailed 
from England, the captain of the brigantine (who had 
treated us with the most unremitting attention and kind- 
ness, and had been warmly seconded in his efforts for our 
good by all the people under his command) volunteered to 
20 go sufficiently out of his course to enable us to speak the 
first Californian coasting-vessel sailing in the direction 
of San Francisco. We were lucky in meeting wdth one 
of these sooner than we expected. Three days after 
parting from the kind captain of the brigantine, we, the 
25 surviving passengers and crew of the Golden Mary, 
touched the firm ground once more, on the shores of 
California. 

We were hardly collected here before we were obliged 
to separate again. Captain Lavender, though he was 
30 hardly yet in good travelling trim, accompanied Mrs. 
Atherfield inland, to see her safe under her husband’s 
protection. Miss Coleshaw went with them, to stay with 
Mrs. x\therfield for a little while before she attempted 
to proceed with any matters of her own which had brought 
35 her to this part of the world. The rest of us, who were 
left behind with nothing particular to do until the captain’s 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


175 


return, followed the passengers to the gold-diggings. 
Some few of us had enough of the life there in a very short 
time. The rest seemed bitten by old Mr. Rarx’s mania 
for gold, and insisted on stopping behind when Rames 
and I proposed going back to the port. We two, and 5 
five of our steadiest seamen, were all the officers and crew 
left to meet the captain on his return from the inland 
country. 

He reported that he had left Mrs. Atherfield and 
Miss Coleshaw safe and comfortable under Mr. Ather- la 
field’s care. They sent affectionate messages to all of us, 
and especially (I am proud to say) to me. After hearing 
this good news, there seemed nothing better to do than 
to ship on board the first vessel bound for England. There 
were plenty in port, ready to sail and only waiting for 15 
the men belonging to them who had deserted to the gold- 
diggings. We were all snapped up eagerly, and offered 
any rate we chose to set on our services, the moment we 
made known our readiness to ship for England — all, 

I ought to have said, except Captain Ravender, who w'ent 20 
along with us in the capacity of passenger only. 

Nothing of any moment occurred on the voyage back. 
The captain and I got ashore at Gravesend safe and 
hearty, and went up to London as fast as the train could 
carry us, to report the cajamity that had occurred to the 25 
owners of the Golden jMary. When that duty had been 
performed. Captain Ravender went back to his own 
house at Poplar, and I travelled to the West of England 
to report myself to my old father and mother. 

Here I might well end all these pages of writing; but 30 
I cannot refrain from adding a few more sentences, to tell 
the reader what I am sure he will be glad to hear. In 
the summer-time of this present year eighteen hundred and 
fifty-six, I happened to be at New York, and having spare 
time on my hands, and spare cash in my pocket, I walked 35 
into one of the biggest and grandest of their ordinaries 


176 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 


there, to have my dinner. I had hardly sat down at 
table, before who should I see opposite but Mrs. Atherfield, 
as bright-eyed and pretty as ever, with a gentleman on 
hei right hand, and on her left — another Golden Lucy! 

5 Her hair was a shade or two darker than the hair of my 
poor little pet of past sad times; but in all other respects 
the living child reminded me so strongly of the dead, that 
I quite started at the first sight of her. I could not tell 
if I was to try, how happy we were after dinner, or how 
10 much we had to say to each other. I was introduced to 
Mrs. Atherfield’s husband, and heard from him, among 
other things, that Miss Coleshaw was married to her old 
sweetheart, w’^ho had fallen into misfortunes and errors, 
and whom she was determined to set right by giving him 
15 the great chance in life of getting a good wife. They were 
settled in America, like Mr. and Mrs. Atherfield — these 
last and the child being on their way, when I met them, 
to visit a friend living in the northernmost part of the 
States. 

30 With the relation of this circumstance, and with my 
personal testimony to the good health and spirits of 
Captain Ravender the last time I saw him, ends all that 
I have to say in connection with the subject of the Wreck 
of the Golden Mary, and the Great Deliverance of her 
35 People at Sea. 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


FROM THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS 

In the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety- 
nine, a relative of mine came limping down, on foot, to 
this town of Chatham. I call it this town, because if 
anybody present knows to a nicety where Rochester ends 
and Chatham begins, it is more than I do. He was a poor 
traveller, with not a farthing in his pocket. He sat by the 
fire in this very room, and he slept one night in a bed that 
will be occupied to-night by some one here. 

My relative came down to Chatham to enlist in a cavalry 
regiment, if a cavalry regiment would have him; if not, to 
take King George’s shilling from any corporal or serjeant 
who would put a bunch of ribbons in his hat. His object 
was to get shot; but he thought he might as well ride to 
death as be at the trouble of walking. 

My relative’s Christian name was Richard, but he was 
better known as Dick. He dropped his own surname on 
the road down, and took up that of Doubledick. He was 
passed as Richard Doubledick; age, twenty-two; height, 
five foot ten; native place. Exmouth, which he had never 
been near in his life. There was no cavalry in Chatham 
when he limped over the bridge here with half a shoe to 
his dusty feet, so he enlisted into a regiment of the line and 
was glad to get drunk and forget all about it. 

You are to know that this relative of mine had gone 
wrong, and run wild. His heart was in the right place, but 
it was sealed up. He had been betrothed to a good and 
beautiful girl, whom he had loved better than she — or per- 
haps even he — believed; but in an evil hour he had given 

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RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


her cause to say to him solemnly, “Richard, I will never 
marry another man. I will live single for your sake, but 
Mary Marshall’s lips” — her name was Mary Marshall — 
“never address another word to you on earth. Go, 
5 Richard! Heaven forgive you!” This finished him. 
This brought him down to Chatham. This made him 
Private Richard Doubledick, with a determination to be 
shot. 

There was not a more dissipated and reckless soldier in 
10 Chatham barracks, in the year one thousand seven hun- 
dred and ninety-nine, than Private Richard Doubledick. 
He associated with the dregs of every regiment; he was as 
seldom sober as he could be, and was constantly under 
punishment. It became clear to the whole barracks that 
Private Richard Doubledick would very soon be flogged. 

Now the Captain of Richard Doubledick’s company was 
a young gentleman not above five years his senior, whose 
eyes had an expression in them which affected Private 
Richard Doubledick in a very remarkable way. They 
20 were bright, handsome, dark eyes, — what are called laugh- 
ing eyes generally, and, when serious, rather steady than 
severe, — but they were the only eyes now left in his nar- 
rowed world that Private Richard Doubledick could not 
stand. Unabashed by evil report and punishment, de- 
25 fiant of everything else and everybody else, he had but to 
know that those eyes looked at him for a moment, and he 
felt ashamed. He could not so much as salute Captain 
Taunton in the street like any other officer. He was re- 
proached and confused, — troubled by the mere possi- 
30 bility of the captain’s looking at him. In his worst mo- 
ments, he would rather turn back, and go any distance 
out of his way, than encounter those two handsome, 
dark, bright eyes. 

One day, when Private Richard Doubledick came out of 
35 the Black hole, where he had been passing the last eight- 
and-forty hours, and in which retreat he spent a good deal 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 179 

of his time, he was ordered to betake himself to Captain 
Taunton’s quarters. In the stale and squalid state of a man 
just out of the Black hole, he had less fancy than ever for 
being seen by the captain; but he was not so mad yet as to 
disobey orders, and consequently went up to the terrace 
overlooking the parade-ground, where the officers’ quarters 
were; twisting and breaking in his hands, as he went along, 
a bit of the straw that had formed the decorative furniture 
of the Black hole. 

“Come ini” cried the Captain, when he knocked with 
his knuckles at the door. Private Richard Double- 
dick pulled off his cap, took a stride forward, and felt very 
conscious that he stood in the light of the dark, bright 
eyes. 

There was a silent pause. Private Richard Double- 
dick had put the straw in his mouth, and was gradually 
doubling it up into his windpipe and choking himself. 

“Doubledick,” said the Captain, “do you know where 
you are going to ?” 

“To the Devil, sir ?” faltered Doubledick. 

“Yes,” returned the Captain. “And very fast.” 

Private Richard Doubledick turned the straw of the 
Black hole in his mouth, and made a miserable salute of 
acquiescence. 

“Doubledick,” said the Captain, “since I entered his 
Majesty’s service, a boy of seventeen, I have been pained 
to see many men of promise going that road; but I have 
never been so pained to see a man determined to make 
the shameful journey as I have been, ever since you 
joined the regiment, to see you.” 

Private Richard Doubledick began to find a film steal- 
ing over the floor at which he looked; also to find the legs 
of the Captain’s breakfast-table turning crooked, as if he 
saw them through w^ater. 

“I am only a common soldier, sir,” said he. “It sig- 
nifies very little what such a poor brute comes to.” 


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KICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


“You are a man/’ returned the Captain, with grave 
indignation, “of education and superior advantages; and 
if you say that, meaning w'hat you say, you have sunk 
lower than I had believed. How low that must be, 
I leave you to consider, knowing what I know of your 
disgrace, and seeing what I see.” 

“I hope to get shot soon, sir,” said Private Richard 
Doubledick; “and then the regiment and the world to- 
gether will be rid of me.” 

The legs of the table were becoming very crooked. 
Doubledick, looking up to steady his vision, met the eyes 
that had so strong an influence over him. He put his hand 
before his own eyes, and the breast of his disgrace jacket 
swelled as if it would fly asunder. 

“I would rather,” said the young Captain, “see this in 
you. Doubledick, than I would see five thousand guineas 
counted out upon this table for a gift to my good mother. 
Have you a mother?” 

“I am thankful to say she is dead, sir.” 

“If your praises,” returned the Captain, “were sound- 
ed from mouth to mouth through the whole regiment, 
through the whole army, through the whole country, you 
would wish she had lived to say, with pride and joy, ‘He 
is my sonT ” 

‘Spare me, sir,” said Doubledick. “She would never 
have heard any good of me. She would never have had 
any pride and joy in owning herself my mother. Love 
and compassion she might have had, and would have 
always had, I know; but not — Spare me, sir! I am a 
broken wretch, quite at your mercy!” And he turned his 
face to the w’all, and stretched out his imploring hand. 

'“My friend — ” began the Captain. 

“God bless you, sir!” sobbed Private Richard Double- 
dick. 

“You are at the crisis of your fate. Hold your course 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


181 


unchanged a little longer, and you know what must hap- 
pen. I know even better than you can imagine, that, 
after that has happened, you are lost. No man who could 
shed those tears could bear those marks. 

“I fully believe it, sir,” in a low, shivering voice said 5 
Private Richard Doubledick. 

‘‘But a man in any station can do his duty,” said the 
young Captain, “and, in doing it, can earn his own respect, 
even if his case should be so very unfortunate and so very 
rare that he can earn no other’s man’s. A common 10 
soldier, poor brute though you called him just now, has 
this advantage in the stormy times we live in, that he 
always does his duty before a host of sympathising wit- 
nesses. Do you doubt that he may so do it as to be ex- 
tolled through a whole regiment, through a whole army, 
through a whole country? Turn while you may yet re- 
trieve the past, and try.” 

“I will! I ask for only one witness, sir,” cried Richard, 
with a bursting heart. 

“I understand you. I will be a watchful and a faithful ^0 
one.” 

I have heard from Private Richard Doubledick’s own 
lips, that he dropped down upon his knee, kissed that 
officer’s hand, arose, and went out of the light of the dark, 
bright eyes, an altered man. 25 

In that year, one thousand seven hundred and ninety- 
nine, the French were in Egypt, in Italy, in Germany, 
where not? Napoleon Bonaparte had likewise begun to 
stir against us in India, and most men could read the 
signs of the great troubles that were coming on. In that 30 
very next year, when we formed an alliance with Austria 
against him, Captain Taunton’s regiment was on service 
in India. And there was not a finer non-commissioned 
officer in it, — no, nor in the whole line — than Corporal 
Richard Doubledick. 35 

In eighteen hundred and one, the Indian army were on 


182 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


the coast of Egypt. Next year was the year of the procla- 
mation of the short peace, and they were recalled. It had 
then become well known to thousands of men, that wher- 
ever Captain Taunton, with the dark, bright eyes, led, 
5 there, close to him, ever at his side, firm as a rock, true as 
the sun, and brave as Mars, would be certain to be found, 
while life beat in their hearts, that famous soldier, Ser- 
jeant Richard Doubledick. 

Eighteen hundred and five, besides being the great year 
10 of Trafalgar, was a year of hard fighting in India. That 
year saw such wonders done by a Serjeant-Major, who cut 
his way single-handed through a solid mass of men, re- 
covered the colours of his regiment, -which had been seized 
from the hand of a poor boy shot through the heart, and 
15 rescued his wounded Captain, who was down, and in a 
very jungle of horses’ hoofs and sabres, — saw such won- 
ders done, I say, by this brave Serjeant-Major, that he was 
specially made the bearer of the colours he had won; and 
Ensign Richard Doubledick had risen from the ranks. 

20 Sorely cut up in every battle, but always reinforced by 
the bravest of men, — for the fame of following the old 
colours, shot through and through, which Ensign Richard 
Doubledick had saved, inspired all breasts, — this regiment 
fought its way through the Peninsular war, up to the in- 
25 vestment of Badajos in eighteen hundred and twelve. 
Again and again it had been cheered through the British 
ranks until the tears had sprung into men’s eyes at the 
mere hearing of the mighty British voice, so exultant in 
their valour; and there was not a drummer-boy but knew 
30 the legend that wherever the two friends. Major Taunton, 
with the dark bright eyes, and Ensign Richard Doubledick, 
who was devoted to him, were seen to go, there the bold- 
est spirits in the English army became wild to follow. 

One day, at Badajos, — not in the great storming, but in 
35 repelling a hot sally of the besieged upon our men at work 
in the trenches, who had given way, — the two officers found 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


183 


themselves hurrying forward, face to face, against a party 
of French infantry, who made a stand. There was an 
officer at their head, encouraging his men, — a courageous, 
handsome, gallant officer of five-and-thirty, whom Double- 
dick saw hurriedly, almost momentarily, but saw well. He 
particularly noticed this officer waving his sword, and rally- 
ing his men with an eager and excited cry, when they fired 
in obedience to his gesture, and Major Taunton dropped. 

It was over in ten minutes more, and Doubledick re- 
turned to the spot where he had laid the best friend man 
ever had on a coat spread upon the wet clay. Major 
Taunton’s uniform was opened at the breast, and on his 
shirt were three little spots of blood. 

“Dear Doubledick,” said he, “I am dying.” 

“For the love of Heaven, no!” exclaimed the other, 
kneeling down beside him, and passing his arm round his 
neck to raise his head. “Taunton! My preserver, my 
guardian angel, my witness! Dearest, truest, kindest of 
human beings ! Taunton ! For God’s sake !” 

The bright, dark eyes — so very, very dark now, in the 
pale face — smiled upon him; and the hand he had kissed 
thirteen years ago laid itself fondly on his breast. 

“Write to my mother. You will see Home again. Tell 
her how we became friends. It will comfort her, as it 
comforts me.” 

He spoke no more, but faintly signed for a moment 
towards his hair as it fluttered in the wina. The Ensign 
understood him. He smiled again when he saw that, and, 
gently turning his face over on the supporting arm as if for 
rest, died, with his hand upon the breast in which he had 
revived a soul. 

No dry eye looked on Ensign Richard Doubledick that 
melancholy day. He buried his friend on the field, and 
became a lone bereaved man. Beyond his duty he ap- 
peared to have but two remaining cares in life, — one, to 
preserve the little })acket of hair he was to give to Taun- 


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RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


ton’s mother; the other, to encounter that French officer 
who had rallied the men under whose fire Taunton fell. 
A new legend now began to circulate among our troops; 
and it was, that when he and the French officer came face 
to face once more, there would be weeping in France. 

The war went on — and through it went the exact pic- 
ture of the French officer on the one side, and the bodily 
reality upon the other — until the Battle of Toulouse was 
fought. In the returns sent home appeared these words: 
“Severely wounded, but not dangerously, Lieutenant 
Richard Doubledick.” 

At Midsummer-time, in the year eighteen hundred and 
fourteen, Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, now a brown 
soldier, seven-and-thirty years of age, came home to Eng- 
land invalided. He brought the hair with him, near his 
heart. Many a French officer had he seen since that day; 
many a dreadful night, in searching with men and lan- 
terns for his wounded, had he relieved French officers 
lying disabled; but the mental picture and the reality had 
never come together. 

Though he was w^eak and suffered pain, he lost not an 
hour in getting down to Frome in Somersetshire, wffiere 
T aimton’ s mother lived. In the sw^eet, compassionate w ords 
that naturally present themselves to the mind to-night, 
“he w^as the only son of his mother, and she was a wddowL” 

It w^as a Sunday evening, and the lady sat at her quiet 
garden-window^, reading the Bible; reading to herself, in a 
trembling voice, that very passage in it, as I have heard 
him tell. He heard the w^ords: “Young man, I say unto 
thee, arise!” 

He had to pass the wdndow^ ; and the bright, dark eyes of 
his debased time seemed to look at him. Her heart told 
her who he was; she came to the door quickly, and fell 
upon his neck. 

“He saved me from ruin, made me a human creature, 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


185 


won me from infamy and shame. O, God for eve^ bless 
him I As He will , He will !’ ’ 

“He will !” the lady answered. “1 know he is in Heaven I 
Then she piteously cried, “But O, my darling boy, my 
darling boy!” 5 

Never from the hour when Private Richard Doubledick 
enlisted at Chatham had the Private, Corporal, Serjeant, 
Serjeant-Major, Ensign, or Lieutenant breathed his right 
name, or the name of Mary Marshall, or a word of the 
story of his life, into any ear except his reclaimers. That 
previous scene in his existence was closed. He had firmly 
resolved that his expiation should be to live unknowm; to 
disturb no more the peace that had long grown over his old 
offences; to let it be revealed, when he was dead, that he 
had striven and suffered, and had never forgotten; and 
then, if they could forgive him and believe him — well, it 
would be time enough — time enough! 

But that night, remembering the words he had cherished 
for two years, “Tell her how we became friends. It will 
comfort her, as it comforts me,” he related everything. It 20 
gradually seemed to him as if in his maturity he had recov- 
ered a mother; it gradually seemed to her as if in her 
bereavement she had found a son. During his stay in 
England, the quiet garden into which he had slowly and 
painfully crept, a stranger, became the boundary of his 25 
home; when he was able to rejoin his regiment in the 
spring, he left the garden, thinking was this indeed the first 
time he had ever turned his face towards the old colours 
with a woman’s blessing! 

He followed them — so ragged, so scarred and pierced sa 
now, that they would scarcely hold together — to Quatre 
Bras and Ligny. He stood beside them, in an awful still- 
ness of many men, shadowy through the mist and drizzle 
of a wet June forenoon, on the field of Waterloo. And 
down to that hour the picture in his mind of the French 35 
officer had never been compared with the reality. 


186 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


Thg famous regiment was in action early in battle, 
and received its first check in many an eventful year, when 
he was seen to fall. But it swept on to avenge him, and 
left behind it no such creature in the world of consciousness 
6 as Lieutenant Richard Doubledick. 

Through pits of mire, and pools of rain; along deep 
ditches, once roads, that were pounded and ploughed to 
pieces by artillery, heavy wagons, tramp of men and horses, 
and the struggle of every wheeled thing that could carry 
10 wounded soldiers; jolted among the dying and the dead, so 
disfigured by blood and mud as to be hardly recognisable 
for humanity; undisturbed by the moaning of men and the 
shrieking of horses, which, newly taken from the peaceful 
pursuits of life, could not endure the sight of the stragglers 
15 lying by the wayside, never to resume their toilsome jour- 
ney; dead, as to any sentient life that was in it, and yet 
alive, — the form that had been Lieutenant Richard Double- 
dick, with whose praises England rang, was conveyed to 
Brussels. There it was tenderly laid down in hospital ; and 
20 there it lay, week after week, through the long bright sum- 
mer days, until the harvest, spared by war, had ripened 
and was gathered in. 

Over and over again the sun rose and set upon the 
crowded city; over and over again the moonlight nights 
25 were quiet on the plains of Waterloo; and all that time was 
a blank to what had been Lieutenant Richard Doubledick. 
Rejoicing troops marched into Brussels, and marched out; 
brothers and fathers, sisters, mothers, and wives, came 
thronging thither, drew their lots of joy or agony, and de- 
30 parted; so many times a day the bells rang; so many times 
the shadows of the great buildings changed; so many lights 
sprang up at dusk; so many feet passed here and there upon 
the pavements; so many hours of sleep and cooler air of 
night succeeded: indifferent to all, a marble face lay on a 
35 bed, like the face of a recumbent statue on the tomb of 
Lieutenant Richard Doubledick. 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


187 


Slowly laboring, at last, through a long heavy dream of 
confused time and place, presenting faint glimpses of army 
surgeons whom he knew, and of faces that had been familiar 
to his youth, — dearest and kindest among them, Mary 
Marshall’s wdth a solicitude upon it more like reality than 5 
anything he could discern, — Lieutenant Richard Double- 
dick came back to life. To the beautiful life of a calm 
autumn evening sunset, to the peaceful life of a fresh quiet 
room with a large window standing open; a balcony be- 
yond, in which were moving leaves and sweet-smelling lo 
flowers; beyond, again, the clear sky, with the sun full in 
sight, pouring its golden radiance on his bed. 

It was so tranquil and so lovely that he thought he had 
passed into another world. And he said in a faint voice, 
‘‘Taunton, are you near me ?” i5 

A face bent over him. Not his, his mother’s. 

“I came to nurse you. We have nursed you many weeks. 
You were moved here long ago. Do you remember noth- 
ing?” 

“Nothing.” 20 

The lady kissed his cheek, and held his hand, soothing 
him. 

“Where is the regiment? What has happened? Let 
me call you mother. What has happened, mother?” 

“A great victory, dear. The war is over, and the regi- 25 
ment was the bravest in the field.” 

His eyes kindled, his lips trembled, he sobbed, and the 
tears ran down his face. He was very weak, too weak to 
move his hand. 

“Was it dark just now ?” he asked presently. 3G 

“No.” 

“It was only dark to me ? Something passed away, like 
a black shadow. But as it went, and the sun — O blessed 
sun, how beautiful it is! — touched my face, I thought I saw 
a light white cloud pass out at the door. Was there noth- 35 
ing that went out?” 


188 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


She shook her head, and in a little while he fell asleep, she 
still holding his hand, and soothing him. 

From that time he recovered. Slowly, for he had been 
desperately wounded in the head, and had been shot in the 
5 body, but making some little advance every day. When 
he haxl gained sufficient strength to converse as he lay in 
bed, he soon began to remark that INIrs. Taunton always 
brought him back to his own history. Then he recalled 
his preserver’s dying words, and thought, “It comforts her.” 
to One day he woke out of a sleep, refreshed, and asked 
her to read to him. But the curtain of the bed, softening 
the hght, which she always drew back wdien he awoke, that 
she might see him from her table at the bedside where she 
sal at work, was held undrawn; and a woman’s voice spoke, 
15 which was not hers. 

“Can you bear to see a stranger?” it said softly. “Will 
you like to see a stranger?” 

“Stranger 1” he repeated. The voice awoke old memo- 
ries, before the days of Private Richard Doubledick. 

20 “A stranger now, but not a stranger once,” it said in 
tones that thrilled him. ‘Richard, dear Richard, lost 
through so many years, my name — ” 

He cried out her name, “Mary,” and she held him in 
her arms, and his head lay on her bosom. 

25 “I am not breaking a rash vow, Rk'hard. These are 
not Mary Marshall’s lips that speak. 1 have another 
name.” 

She was married. 

“I have another mmie, Richard. Did you ever hear it ?” 
so “Never!” 

He looked into her face, so pensively beautiful, and 
wondered at the smile upon it through her tears. 

“Think again, Richard. Are you sure you never heard 
my altered name?” 

35 “Never!” 

“Don’t move your head to look at me, dear Richard. 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 189 

Let it lie here, while I tell my story. 1 loved a generous, 
noble man; loved him with my whole heart; loved him 
for years and years; loved him faithfully, devotedly; 
loved him with no hope of return; loved him, knowing 
nothing of his highest qualities — not even knowing that 
he was alive. He was a brave soldier. He was honoured 
and beloved by thousands of thousands, when the mother 
of his dear friend found me, and showed me that in all 
his triumphs he had never forgotten me. He was wounded 
in a great battle. He was brought, dying, here, into 
Brussels. I came to watch and tend him, as I would have 
joyfully gone, with such a purpose, to the dreariest ends 
of the earth. When he knew no one else, he knew me. 
When he suffered most, he bore his sufferings barely 
murmuring, content to rest his head where yours rests 
now. AVhen he lay at the point of death, he married me, 
that he might call me Wife before he died. And the name, 
my dear love, that I took on that forgotten night — ” 

‘H know it now!” he sobbed. “The shadowy remem- 
brance strengthens. It is come back. I thank Heaven 
that my mind is quite restored! My Mary, kiss me; 
lull this weary head to rest, or I shall die of gratitude. 
His parting words were fulfilled. I see Home again!” 

Well! They were happy. It was a long recovery, but 
they were happy through it all. The snow had melted 
on the ground, and the birds were singing in the leafless 
thic*kets of the early spring, when thqse three were first 
able to ride out together, and when people flocked about 
the open carriage to cheer and congratulate Captain 
Richard Doubledick. 

But even then it became necessary for the Captain, 
instead of returning to England, to complete his recovery 
in the climate of Southern France. They found a spot 
upon the Rhone, within a ride of the old town of Avignon, 
and within view of its broken bridge, which was all they 
could desire; they lived there, together, six months; 


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RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


then returned to England. ]Mrs. Taunton, growing old 
after three years — though not so old as that her bright, 
dark eyes were dimmed — and remembering that her 
strength had been benefited by the change, resolved to go 
5 back for a year to those parts. So she went with a faithful 
servant, who had often carried her son in his arms; and 
she was to be rejoined and escorted home, at the year’s 
end, by Captain Richard Doubledick. 

She wrote regularly to her children (as she called them 
10 now), and they to her. She went to the neighbourhood 
of Aix; and there, in their own chateau near the farmer’s 
house she rented, she grew into intimacy with a family 
belonging to that part of France. The intimacy began 
in her often meeting among the vineyards a pretty child, 
15 a girl with a most compassionate heart, who was never 
tired of listening to the solitary English lady’s stories 
of her poor son and the cruel wars. The family were as 
gentle as the child, and at length she came to know them 
so well that she accepted their invitation to pass the last 
20 month of her residence abroad under their roof. All this 
intelligence she wrote home, piecemeal as it came about, 
from time to time;- and at last enclosed a polite note, 
from the head of the chateau, soliciting, on the occasion of 
his approaching mission to that neighbourhood, the 
25 honour of the company of cet homme si justement celebre, 
Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick. 

Captain Doubledick, now a hardy, handsome man in 
the full vigour of life, broader across the chest and shoulders 
than he had ever been before, despatched a courteous 
30 reply, and followed it in person. Travelling through all 
that extent of country after three years of Peace, he blessed 
the better days on which the world had fallen. The corn 
was golden, not drenched in unnatural red; was bound 
in sheaves for food, not trodden underfoot by men in mortal 
35 fight. The smoke rose up from peaceful hearths, not 
blazing ruins. The carts were laden Avith the fair fruits 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 191 

of the earth, not with wounds and death. To him who had 
so often seen the terrible reverse, these things were beauti- 
ful indeed; and they brought him in a softened spirit 
to the old chateau near Aix upon a deep blue evening. 

It was a large chateau of the genuine old ghostly kind, 
with round towers, and extinguishers, and a high leaden 
roof, and more window^s than Aladdin’s Palace. The 
lattice blinds were all thrown open after the heat of the 
day, and there were glimpses of rambling walls and cor- 
ridors within. Then there were immense out-buildings 
fallen into partial decay, masses of dark trees, terrace- 
gardens, balustrades; tanks of water, too weak to play 
and too dirty to work; statues, weeds, and thickets of 
iron railing that seenjed to have overgrown themselves 
like the shrubberies, and to have branched out in all 
manner of wild shapes. The entrance doors stood open, 
as doors often do in that country when ‘the heat of the day 
is past; and the Captain saw^ no bell or knocker, and 
walked in. 

He walked into a lofty stone hall, refreshingly cool and 
gloomy after the glare of a Southern day’s travel. Ex- 
tending along the four sides of this hall was a gallery, 
leading to suites of rooms; and it was lighted from the 
top. Still no bell was to be seen. 

“Faith,” said the Captain halting, ashamed of the 
clanking of his boots, “this is a ghostly beginning I” 

He started back, and felt his face turn white. In the 
gallery, looking down at him, stood the French officer — 
the officer whose picture he had carried in his mind so 
long and so far. Compared with the original, at last- 
in every lineament how like it was! 

He moved, and disappeared, and Captain Richard 
Doubledick heard his steps coming quickly down into 
the hall. He entered through an archway. There was a 
bright, sudden look upon his face, much such a look as 
it had worn in that fatal moment. 


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RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick? En- 
chanted to receive him! A thousand apologies! The 
servants were all out in the air. There w’as a little fete 
among them in the garden. In effect, it w^as the fete day 
5 of my daughter, the little cherished and protected of 
Madame Taunton. 

He was so gracious and so frank that Monsieur le 
Capitaine Richard Doubledick could not withhold his 
hand. “It is the hand of a brave Englishman,” said the 
to French officer, retaining it while he spoke. “I could 
respect a brave Englishman, even as my foe, how much 
more as my friend! I also am a soldier.” 

“He has not remembered me, as I have remembered 
him; he did not take such note of my face, that day, as 
I took of his,” thought Captain Richard Doubledick. 
“How shall I tell him?” 

The French officer conducted his guest into a garden 
and presented him to his wife, an engaging and beautiful 
woman, sitting with Mrs. Taunton in a wffiimsical old- 
20 fashioned pavilion. His daughter, her fair young face 
beaming with joy, came running to embraee him; and 
there was a boy-baby to tumble down among the orange 
trees on the broad steps, in making for his father’s legs. 
A multitude of children visitors w’ere dancing to sprightly 
-25 music; and all the servants and peasants about the chateau 
were dancing too. It was a scene of innocent happiness 
that might have been invented for the climax of the scenes 
of peace which had soothed the Captain’s journey. 

He looked on, greatly troubled in his mind, until a 
30 resounding bell rang, and the French officer begged to 
show him his rooms. They went up-stairs into the 
gallery from which the officer had looked down; and 
Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick w^as cordially 
welcomed to a grand outer chamber, and a smaller one 
35 wdthin, all clocks and draperies, and hearths, and brazen 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


193 


dogs, and tiles, and cool devices, and elegance, and vast- 
ness. 

“\ou were at Waterloo,” said the French officer. 

“I was,” said Captain Richard Doiibledick. “And at 
Badajos.” 6 

Left alone with the sound of his own stern voice Jn his 
ears, he sat down to consider, What shall I do, and how 
shall I tell him? At that time, unhappily, many deplor- 
able duels had been fought between English and French 
officers, arising out of the recent war; and these duels, lo 
and how to avoid this officer s hospitality, were the upper- 
most thought in Captain Richard Doubledick’s mind. 

He was thinking, and letting the time run out in which 
he should have dressed for dinner, when Mrs. Taunton 
spoke to him outside the door, asking if he could give her 15 
the letter he had brought from Mary. “His mother, 
above all,” the Captain thought. “How shall I tell herf* 
“You will form a friendship with your host, I hope,” 
said Mrs. Taunton, whom he hurriedly admitted, “that 
will last for life. He is so true-hearted and so generous, 20 
Richard, that you can hardly fail to esteem one another. 

If He had been spared,” she kissed (not without tears) 
the locket in which she wore his hair, “he would have 
appreciated him with his own magnanimity, and would 
have been truly happy that the evil days were past which 25 
made such a man his enemy.” 

She left the room; and the Captain walked, first to one 
window, whence he could see the dancing in the garden, 
then to another window, whence he could see the smiling 
])rospect and the peaceful vineyards. 30 

“Spirit of my departed friend,” said he, “is it through 
thee these better thoughts are rising in my mind? Is it 
thou who hast shown me, all the way I have been drawn 
to meet this man, the blessings of the altered time ? Is it 
thou who has sent thy stricken mother to me, to stay my 35 
angry hand? Is it from thee the whisper comes, that 


194 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 


this man did his duty as thou didst, — and as I did, through 
thy guidance, which has wholly saved me here on earth, 
— and that he did no more?” 

He sat down, with his head buried in his hands, and, 
5 when he rose up, made the second strong resolution of 
his life, — that neither to the French officer, nor to the 
mother of his departed friend, nor to any soul, while either 
of the two was living, would he breathe what only he 
knew. And when he touched that French officer’s glass 
10 with his own, that day at dinner, he secretly forgave him 
in the name of the Divine Forgiver of injuries. 

Here I ended my story as the first Poor Traveller. 
But, if I had told it now, I could have added that the time 
has since come when the son of Major Richard Double- 
15 dick, and the son of that French officer, friends as their 
fathers were before them, fought side by side in one cause, 
with their respective nations, like long-divided brothers 
whom the better times have brought together, fast united. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


CHIRP THE FIRST 

The kettle began it! Don’t tell me what Mrs. Peery- 
bingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave 
it on record to the end of time that she couldn’t say which 
of them began it; but, I say the Kettle did. I ought to 
know, I hope ? The Kettle began it, full five minutes by 
the little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner before the 
Cricket uttered a chirp. 

As if the clock hadn’t finished striking, and the convul- 
sive little Haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and 
left with a scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn’t 
mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass before the 
Cricket joined in at all ! 

Why, I am not naturally .positive. Every one knows 
that. I wouldn’t set my own opinion against the opinion 
of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were quite sure, on any 
account whatever. Nothing should induce me. But this 
is a question of fact. And the fact is, that the Kettle began 
it, at least five minutes before the Cricket gave any sign 
of being in existence. Contradict me; and I’ll say ten. 

Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have 
proceeded to do so, in my very first word, but for this plain 
consideration — if I am to tell a story I must begin at the 
beginning; and how is it possible to begin at the beginning, 
without beginning at the Kettle ? 

It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of 
skill, you must understand, between the Kettle and the 
Cricket. And this is what led to it, and how it came 
about. 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and 
clicking over the wet stones in a pair of pattens that 
worked innumerable rough impressions of the first propo- 
sition in Euclid all about the yard — Mrs. Peerybingle 
5 filled the Kettle at the water-butt. Presently returning, 
less the pattens; and a good deal less, for they were tall and 
Mrs. Peerybingle was but short; she set the Kettle on the 
fire. In doing which she lost her temper, or mislaid it for 
an instant; for, the water — being uncomfortably cold, 
10 and in that slippy, slushy, sleety sort of state wherein it 
seems to penetrate through every kind of substance, patten 
rings included — had laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle' s toes, 
and even splashed her legs. And when we rather plume 
ourselves (with reason too) upon our legs, and keep our- 
15 selves particularly neat in point of stockings, we find this, 
for the moment, hard to bear. 

Besides, the Kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It 
wouldn’t allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it 
wouldn’t hear of accommodating itself kindly to the knobs 
20 of coal; it would lean forward with a drunken air, and 
dribble, a very Idiot of a Kettle, on the hearth. It was 
quarrelsome; and hissed and sputtered morosely at the fire. 
To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle’s fingers, 
first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious 
35 pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways in — 
down to the very bottom of the Kettle. And the hull of the 
Royal George has never made half the monstrous resist- 
ance to coming out of the water, which the lid of that 
Kettle employed against Mrs. Peerybingle, before she got 
30 it up again. 

It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then; 
carrying its handle with an air of defiance, and cocking its 
spout pertly and mockingly at Airs. Peerybingle, as if it 
said, “I won’ t boil . N othing shall induce me !” 

35 But Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good humour, 
dusted her chubby little hands against each other, and sat 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


197 


down before the Kettle: laughing. Meantime, the jolly 
blaze uprose and fell, flashing and gleaming on the little 
Haymaker at the top of the Dutch clock, until one might 
have thought he stood stock still before the Moorish 
Palace, and nothing was in motion but the flame. 

He was on the move, however; and had his spasms, two 
to the second, all right and regular. But his sufferings 
when the clock was going to strike, were frightful to behold ; 
and when a Cuckoo looked out of a trap-door in the 
Palace, and gave note six times, it shook him, each time, 
like a spectral voice — or like a something wiry, plucking 
at his legs. 

It was not until a violent commotion and a whirring 
noise among the weights and ropes below him had quite 
subsided, that this terrified Haymaker became himself 
again. Nor was he startled without reason; for these 
rattling, bony skeletons of clocks are very disconcerting 
in their operation, and I wonder very much how any set of 
men, but most of all how Dutchmen, can have had a liking 
to invent them. For there is a popular belief that Dutch- 
men love broad cases and much clothing for their own 
lower selves; and they might know better than to leave 
their clocks so very lank and unprotected, surely. 

Now it was, you observe, that the Kettle began to spend 
the evening. Now it was, that the Kettle, growing mel- 
low and musical, began to have irrepressible gurglings in 
its throat, and to indulge in short vocal snorts, which it 
checked in the bud, as if it hadn’t quite made up its mind 
yet, to be good company. Now it was, that after two or 
three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, 
it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a 
stream of song so cosy and hilarious, as never maudlin 
nightingale yet formed the least idea of. 

So plain, too ! Bless you, you might have understood it 
like a book — better than some books you and I could name, 
perhaps. With its warm breath gushing forth in a light 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


cloud which merrily and gracefully ascended a few feet, 
then hung about the chimney-corner as its own domestic i 
Heaven, it trolled its song with that strong energy of cheer- 
fulness, that its iron body hummed and stirred upon the 
5 fire; and the lid itself, the recently rebellious lid — such is \ 
the influence of a bright example — performed a sort of I 
jig, and clattered like a deaf and dumb young cymbal that j 
had never knowm the use of its twin brother. i 

That this song of the Kettle’s was a song of invitation and 
10 welcome to somebody out of doors; to somebody at that 
moment coming on, towards the snug small home and the 
crisp fire; there is no doubt whatever. Mrs. Peerybingle 
knew it, perfectly, as she sat musing, before the hearth. 
It’s a dark night, sang the Kettle, and the rotten leaves are i 
15 lying by the way; and above, all is mist and darkness, and 
below, all is mire and clay; and there’s only one relief in all 
the sad and murky air; and I don’t know that it is one, for 
it’s nothing but a glare, of deep and angry crimson, where 
the sun and wind together set a brand upon the clouds for 
^ being guilty of such weather ; and the widest open country 
is a long dull streak of black; and there’s hoar-frost on the 
finger-post, and thaw upon the track; and the ice it isn’t 
water, and the water isn’t free; and you couldn’t say that 
anything is w’hat it ought to be; but he’s coming, coming, 

35 coming! 

And here, if you like, the Cricket did chime in! with a 
Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of 
chorus; with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to 
its size, as compared with the Kettle; (size! you couldn’t 
30 see it!) that if it had then and there burst itself like an 
overcharged gun; if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and 
chirruped its little body into fifty pieces; it would have 
seemed a natural and inevitable eonsequence, for which it 
had expressly laboured. 

35 The Kettle had had the last of its solo performance. It 
persevered with undiminished ardour; but the Cricket took 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


199 


first fiddle anu kept it. Good Heaven, how it chirped! 

Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through the 
house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness like a 
Star. There was an indescribable little trill and tremble in 
it, at its loudest, which suggested its being carried off its 5 
legs, and made to leap again, by its own intense enthusi- 
asm. Yet they went very well together, the Cricket and 
the Kettle. The burden of the song was still the same; 
and louder, louder, louder still, they sang it in their emu- 
lation. 10 

The fair little listener — for fair she was, and young; 
though something of what is called the dumpling shape; 
but I don’t myself object to that — lighted a candle; 
glanced at the Haymaker on the top of the clock, who was 
getting in a pretty average crop of minutes ; and looked out i5 
of the window, where she saw nothing, owing to the dark- 
ness, but her own face imaged in the glass. And my opin- 
ion is (and so would yours have been), that she might have 
looked a long way^ and seen nothing half so agreeable. 
When she came back, and sat down in her former seat, the 20 
Cricket and the Kettle were still keeping it up, with a per- 
fect fury of competition. The Kettle’s weak side clearly 
being that he didn’t know w*hen he was beat. 

There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, 
chirp, chirp! Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum — 25 
m — m! Kettle making play in the distance, like a great 
top. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket round the corner. 
Hum, hum, hum — m — m! Kettle sticking to him in his 
own way; no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp! 
Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum — m — m! 30 
Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket 
going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum — m — m! Kettle 
not to be finished. Until at last, they got jumbled together, 
in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of the match, that 
whether the Kettle chirped and the Cricket hummed, or 35 
the Cricket chirped and the Kettle hummed, or they both 


200 


THE CRICKET OX THE HEARTH 


chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer 
head than yours or mine to have decided with anything 
like certainty. But of this there is no doubt; that the 
Kettle and the Cricket, at one and the same moment, and 
6 by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves, 
sent, each, his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray 
of the candle that shone out through the window; and a 
long way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a I 
certain person who, on the instant, approached towards it , 
10 through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, liter- ! 
ally in a twinkling, and cried, “Welcome home, old fellow! 
Welcome home, my Boy !” 

This end attained, the Kettle, being dead beat, boiled 
over, and was taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then 
15 went running to the door, where, what with the wheels of a 
cart, the tramp of a horse, the voice of a man, the tearing 
in and out of an excited dog, and the surprising and myste- 
rious appearance of a Baby, there was soon the very 
What’s-his-name to pay. , 

20 Where the Baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle 
got hold of it in that flash of time, I don’t know. But a 
live Baby there was, in Mrs. Peerybingle’s arms; and a 
pretty tolerable amount of pride she seemed to have in it, 
when she was drawn gently to the fire, by a sturdy figure of 
25 a man, much taller and much older than herself ; who had 
to stoop a long way down, to kiss her. But she was worth 
the trouble. Six foot six, with the lumbago, might have 
done it. 

“Oh goodness, John!” said Mrs. P. “What a state 
30 you’re in with the weather !” 

He was something the worse for it, undeniably. The 
thick mist hung in clots upon his eyelashes like candied 
thaw; and between the fog and fire together, there were 
rainbows in his very whiskers. 

35 “Why, you see. Dot,” John made answer, slowly, as he 
unrolled a shawl from about his throat; and warmed 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


201 


his hands; “it — it an’t exactly summer weather. So, no 
wonder.” 

“I wish you wouldn’t call me Dot, John. I don’t like 
it,” said Mrs. Peerybingle: pouting in a way that clearly 
showed she did like it, very much. 5 

“Why, what else are you?” returned John, looking down 
upon her with a smile, and giving her waist as light a 
scpieeze as his huge hand and arm could give. “A dot and” 

— here he glanced at the Baby — “a dot and carry — I won’t 
say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a joke, lo 
I don’t know as ever I was nearer.” 

He was often near to something or other very clever, by 
his own account: this lumbering, slow, honest John; this 
John so heavy, but so light of spirit; so rough upon the sur- 
face, but so gentle at the core; so dull without, so quick 15 
within, so stolid, but so good! Oh Mother Nature, give 
thy children the true Poetry of Heart that hid itself in this 
poor Carrier’s breast — he was but a Carrier by the way — 
and we can bear to have them talking Prose, and leading 
lives of Prose ; and bear to bless Thee for their company 1 20 

It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure and her 
Baby in her arms: a very doll of a Baby: glancing with a 
coquettish thoughfulness at the fire, and inclining her 
delicate little head just enough on one side to let it rest in 
an odd, half-natural, half-affected, wholly nestling and 25 
agreeable manner, on the great rugged figure of the Car- 
rier. It was pleasant to see him, with his tender aw’kward- 
ness, endeavoring to adapt his rude support to her slight 
need, and make his burly middle-age a leaning-staff not 
inappropriate to her blooming youth. It was pleasant to 30 
observe how Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the background for 
the Baby, took special cognizance (though in her earliest 
teens) of this grouping; and stood with her mouth and eyes 
wide open, and her head thrust forward, taking it in as if it 
were air. Nor was it less agreeable to observe how John 3a 
the Carrier, reference being made by Dot to the aforesaid 


202 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

Baby, checked his hand when on the point of touching the 
infant, as if he thought he might crack it; and bending 
down, surveyed it from a safe distance, with a kind of puz- 
zled pride; such as an amiable mastiff might be supposed 
5 to show, if he found himself, one day, the father of a yoUng 
canary. 

“An’t he beautiful, John? Don’t he look precious in 
his sleep ?” 

“Very precious,” said John. “Very much so. He gen- 
10 erally is asleep, an’t he ?” 

^‘Lor, John! Good gracious, no!” 

“Oh,” said John, pondering. “I thought his eyes was 
generally shut. Halloa !” 

“Goodness, John, how you startle one!” 

15 “It an’t right for him to turn ’em up in that way!” said 
the astonished Carrier, “is it ? See how he’s winking with 
both of ’em at once! And look at his mouth! why, he’s 
gasping like a gold and silver fish!” 

“You don’t deserve to be a father, you don’t,” said Dot, 
20 with all the dignity of an experienced matron. “But how' 
should you know what little complaints children are 
troubled with, John! You w'ouldn’t so much as know 
their names, you stupid fellow'.” And when she had 
turned the Baby over on her left arm and had slapped its 
25 back as a restorative, she pinched her husband’s ear, 
laughing. 

“No,” said John, pulling off his outer coat. “It’s very 
true. Dot. I don’t know much about it. I only know 
that I’ve been fighting pretty stiffly wdth the Wind to-night. 
30 Its been blow'ing north-east, straight into the cart, the 
whole way home.” 

“Poor old man, so it has!” cried Mrs. Peerybingle, in- 
stantly becoming very active. “Here! Take the precious 
darling, Tilly, while I make myself of some use. Bless it, 
55 I could smother it with kissing it, I could! Hie then, good 
dog! Hie Boxer, boy! Only let me make the tea first, 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


203 


John; and then I’ll help you with the parcels, like a busy 
bee. ‘How doth the little’ — and all the rest of it, you know, 
John. Did you ever learn ‘how doth the little,’ when you 
went to school, John?” 

“Not to quite know it,” John returned. “I was very 
near it once. But I should only have spoilt it, I dare say.” 

“Ha, ha!” laughed Dot. She had the blithest little 
laugh you ever heard. “What a dear old darling of a 
dunce you are, John, to be sure!” 

Not at all disputing this position, John went out to see 
that the boy with the lantern, which had been dancing to 
and fro before the door and window, like a Will of the 
Wisp, took due care of the horse; who was fatter than 
you would quite believe, if I gave you his measure, and so 
old that his birthday was lost in the mists of antiquity. 
Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family 
in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed 
in and out with bewildering inconstancy; now describing 
a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being 
rubbed down at the stable-door; now feigning to make 
savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing 
himself to sudden stops; now eliciting a shriek from 
Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire, 
by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her 
countenance; now exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the 
Baby; now^ going round and round upon the hearth, and 
lying down as if he had established himself for the night; 
now getting up again, and taking that nothing of a fag-end 
of a tail of his, out into the weather, as if he had just 
remembered an appointment, and was off, at a round 
trot, to keep it. 

“There! There’s the teapot, ready on the hob!” 
said Dot; as briskly busy as a child at play at keeping 
house. “And there’s the cold knuckle of ham; and 
there’s the butter; and there’s the crusty loaf, and all! 
Here’s the clothes-basket for the small parcels, John, if 


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204 


THE CRICKET OX THE HEARTH 


you’ve got any there — where are you, John? Don’t 
let the dear child fall under the grate, Tilly, whatever 
you do!” 

It may be noted of Miss Slowboy, in spite of her rejecting 
5 the caution with some vivacity, that she had a rare' and 
surprising talent for getting this Baby into difficulties: 
and had several times imperilled its short life, in a quiet 
way peculiarly her own. She was of a spare and straight 
shape, this young lady, insomuch that her garments 
10 appeared to be in constant danger of sliding off those 
sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which they were loosely 
hung. Her costume was remarkable for the partial 
development, on all possible occasions, of some flannel 
vestment of a singular structure; also for affording 
15 glimpses, in the region of the back, of a corset, or pair of 
stays, in colour a dead-green. Being always in a state 
of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed, besides, 
in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress’s perfections 
and the Baby’s, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of 
20 judgment, may be said to have done equal honour to her 
head and to her heart; and though these did less honour 
to the Baby’s head, which they were the occasional means 
of bringing into contact with deal doors, dressers, stair- 
rails, bedposts, and other foreign substances, still they 
25 were the honest results of Tilly SlowToy’s constant aston- 
ishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and installed 
in such a comfortable home. For, the maternal and 
paternal Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and 
Tilly had been bred by public charity, a Foundling; 
30 which word, though only differing from Fondling by 
one vowel’s length, is very different in meaning, and 
expresses quite another thing. 

To have seen little Mrs. Peerybingle come back with 
her husband; tugging at the clothes-basket, and making 
35 the most strenuous exertions to do nothing at all (for he 
carried it); would have amused you, almost as much as 


THE CRICKET OX THE HEARTH 


205 


it amused him. It may have entertained the Cricket too, 
for anything I know; but certainly, it now began to chirp 
again, vehemently. 

“Heyday!” said John, in his slow way. “It’s merrier 
than ever, to-night, I think.” 

“And it’s sure to bring us good fortune, John! It 
always has done so. To have a Cricket on the Hearth, 
is the luckiest thing in all the world!” 

John looked at her as if he had very nearly got the 
thought into his head, that she was his Cricket in chief, 
and he quite agreed with her. But it was probably one 
of his narrow escapes, for he said nothing. 

“The first time I heard its cheerful little, note, John, 
was on that night when you brought me home — when 
you brought me to my new home here; its little mistress. 
Nearly a year ago. You recollect, John?” 

Oh yes. John remembered. I should think so! 

“Its chirp was such a welcome to me! It seemed so full 
of promise and encouragement. It seemed to say you 
would be kind and gentle with me, and would not expect 
(I had a fear of that, John, then) to find an old head on 
the shoulders of your foolish little wife.” 

John thoughtfully patted one of the shoulders, and then 
the head, as though he would have said No, no; he had 
had no sucJi expectation; he had been quite content to 
take them as they were. And really he had reason. 
They were very comely. 

“It .spoke the truth, John, when it seemed to say so; 
for you have ever been, I am sure, the best, the most 
considerate, the most affectionate of husbands to me. 
This has been a happy home, John; and I love the 
Cricket for its sake!” 

“Why, so do I, then,” .said the Carrier. “So do I, 
Dot.” 

“I love it for the many times I have heard it, and the 
many thoughts its harmless music has given me. Some- 


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30 

2.5 

30 

35 


206 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


times, in the twilight, when I felt a little solitary and down- 
hearted, John — before Baby was here to keep me company 
and make the house gay — when I have thought how lonely 
you would be if I should die; how lonely I should be if 
5 I could know that you had lost me, dear; its Chirp, 
Chirp, Chirp upon the hearth, has seemed to tell me of 
another little voice, so sweet, so very dear to me, before 
whose coming sound my trouble vanished like a dream. 
And when I used to fear — I did fear once, John; I was 
10 very young you know — that ours might prove to be an ill- 
assorted niarriage; I being such a child, and you more like 
my guardian than my husband: and that you might not, 
however hard you tried, be able to learn to love me, as 
you hoped and prayed you might; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp 
15 has cheered me up again, and filled me with new trust and 
confidence. I was thinking of these things to-night, dear 
when I sat expecting you; and I love the Cricket for 
their sake!” 

“And so do I,” repeated John. “But, Dot? 1 hope 
20 and pray that I might learn to love you ? How you talk 1 
I had learnt that, long before I brought you here, to be 
the Cricket’s little mistress. Dot!” 

She laid her hand, an instant, on his arm, and looked up 
at him with an agitated face, as if she would have told him 
25 something. Next moment she was down upo4i her knees 
before the basket; speaking in a sprightly voice, and busy 
with the parcels. 

“There are not many of them to-night^ John, but I 
saw some goods behind the cart, just now; and though 
30 they give more trouble, perhaps, still they pay as well; so 
we have no reason to grumble, have we? Besides, you 
have been delivering, I dare say, as you came along?” 

“Oh yes,” John said. “A good many.” 

“Why, what’s this round box? Heart alive, John, it’s a 
35 wedding-cake!” 

“Leave a woman alone to find out that,” said John, 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


207 


admiringly. “Now a man would never have thought of 
it! Whereas, it’s my belief that if you was to pack a 
wedding-cake up in a tea-chest, or a turn-up bedstead, 
or a pickled salmon keg, or any unlikely thing, a woman 
would be sure to find it out directly. Yes; I called for it 5 
at the pastry-cook’s.” 

“And it weighs I don’t know what — whole hundred 
weights!” cried Dot, making a great demonstration of 
trying to lift it. “Whose is it, John ? Where is it going ?” 

“Read the writing on the other side,” said John. lo 

“Why, John! My Goodness, John!” 

“Ah! who’d have thought it!” John returned. 

“You never mean to say,” pursued Dot, sitting on the 
floor and shaking her head at him, “that it’s Gruff and 
Tackleton the toymaker!” 15 

John nodded. 

Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not 
in assent — in dumb and pitying amazement; screwing up 
her lips the while, with all their little force (they were never 
made for screwing up; I am clear of that), and looking the 20 
good Carrier through and through, in her abstraction. 
Miss Slowboy, in the meantime, who had a mechanical 
power of reproducing scraps of current conversation 
for the delectation of the Baby, with all the sense struck 
out of them, and all the nouns changed into the plural 25 
number, inquired aloud of that young creature. Was 
it Gruff s and Tackletons the toymakers then, and Would 
it call at Pastry-cooks for wedding-cakes, and Did its 
mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them 
homes; and so on. so 

“And that is really to come about!” said Dot. “Why, 
she and I were girls at school together, John.” 

He might have been thinking of her: or nearly thinking 
of her, perhaps: as she was in that same school time. 

He looked upon her with a thoughtful pleasure, but he S 5 
made no answer. 


208 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


“And he’s as old! As unlike her! — ^^Vhy, how many 
years older than you, is Gruff and Tackleton, John?” 

“How many more cups of tea shall I drink to-night at 
one sitting, than Gruff and Tackleton ever took in four, 
5 1 wonder!” replied John, good-humouredly, as he drew 
a chair to the round table, and began at the cold ham. 
“As to eating, I eat but little; but that little I enjoy, Dot.” 

Even this ; his usual sentiment at meal times, one of his 
innocent delusions (for his appetite was always obstinate, 
10 and flatly contradicted him); awoke no smile in the face 
of his little wife, who stood among the parcels, pushing 
the cake-box slowly from her with her foot, and never 
once looked, though her eyes were cast down too, upon 
the dainty shoe she generally was so mindful of. Absorbed 
15 in thought, she stood there, heedless alike of the tea and 
John (although he called to her, and rapped the table 
with his knife to startle her), until he rose and touched 
her on the arm ; when she looked at him for a moment, and 
hurried to her place behind the teaboard, laughing at her 
20 negligence. But not as she had laughed before. The 
manner and the music were quite changed. 

The Cricket, too, had stopped. Somehow the room was 
not so cheerful as it had been. Nothing like it. 

“So these are all the parcels, are they, John?” she 
25 said breaking a long silence, which the honest Carrier had 
devoted to the practical illustration of one part of his 
favourite sentiment — certainly enjoying what he ate, if 
it couldn’t be admitted that he ate but little. “So these 
are all the parcels; are they, John?” 

30 “That’s all,” said John. “Why — no — I — ” laying 
down his knife and fork, and taking a long breath. “I 
declare — I’ve clean forgotten the old gentleman!” 

“The old gentleman?” 

“In the cart,” said John. “He was asleep, among the 
35 straw, the last time I saw him. I’ve very nearly remem- 
bered him, twice, since I came in; but he went out of my 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


209 


head again. Holloa! Yahip there! Rouse up! That’s 
my hearty?” 

John said these latter words outside the door, whither 
he had hurried with the candle in his hand. 

Miss Slowboy, conscious of some mysterious reference 
to The Old Gentleman, and connecting in her mystified 
imagination certain associations of a religious nature with 
the phrase, was so disturbed, that hastily rising from 
the low chair by the fire to seek protection near the skirts 
of her mistress, and coming into contact as she crossed the 
doorway wfith an ancient Stranger, she instinctively made 
a charge or butt at him with the only offensive instrument 
wfithin her reach. This instrument happening to be the 
Baby, great commotion and alarm ensued, which the 
sagacity of Boxer rather tended to increase; for that 
good dog, more thoughtful than its master, had, it seemed, 
been watching the old gentleman in his sleep lest he should 
walk off wfith a few’ young poplar trees that were tied up 
behind the cart; and he still attended on him very closely; 
w orrying his gaiters in fact, and making dead sets at the 
buttons. 

“You’re such an undeniable good sleeper. Sir,” said 
John, w^hen tranquillity w’as restored; in the meantime the 
old gentleman had stood, bareheaded and motionless, in 
the centre of the room; “that I have half a mind to ask you 
w’here the other six are: only that wmuld be a joke, and 1 
know" I should spoil it. Very near though,” murmured the 
Carrier, with a chuckle ; “very near!” 

The Stranger, who had long white hair; good features, 
singularly bold and w’ell defined for an old man ; and dark, 
bright, penetrating eyes; looked round w"ith a smile, and 
saluted the Carrier’s w’ife by gravely inclining his head. 

His garb w"as very quaint and odd — a long, long w"ay 
behind the time. Its hue was brown, all over. In his 
hand he held a great brown club or w’alking-stick ; and strik- 


5 

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30 

25 

30 

35 


210 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


ing this upon the floor, it fell asunder, and became a chair. 
On which he sat down, quite composedly. 

“There!” said the Carrier, turning to his wife. “That’s 
the way I found him, sitting by the roadside! Upright as 
5 a milestone. And almost as deaf.” 

“Sitting in the open air, John !” 

“In the open air,” replied the Carrier, “just at dusk. 
‘Carriage Paid,’ he said; and gave me eighteenpence. 
Then he got in. And there he is.” 

10 “He’s going, John, I think!” 

Not at all. He was only going to speak. 

“If you please, I was to be left till called for,” said the 
Stranger, mildly. “Don’t mind me.” 

With that he took a pair of spectacles from one of his 
15 large pockets, and a book from another, and leisurely be- 
gan to read. Making no more of Boxer than if he had 
been a house lamb ! 

The Carrier and his wife exchanged a look of perplexity. 
The Stranger raised his head; and glancing from the .latter 
20 to the former, said ; 

“Your daughter, my good friend ?” 

“Wife,” returned John. 

“Niece ?” said the Stranger. 

“Wife,” roared John. 

25 “Indeed?” observed the Stranger. “Surely? Very 
young ?” 

He quietly turned over and resumed his reading. But 
before he could have read two lines, he again interrupted 
himself to say: 

30 “Baby, yours?” 

John gave him a gigantic nod; equivalent to an answer 
in the affirmative, delivered through a speaking-trumpet. 

“Girl?” 

“B-o-o-oy!” roared John. 

35 “Also very young, eh ?” 

Mrs. Peerybingle instantly struck in. “Two months 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


211 


and three da-ays! Vaccinated just six weeks ago-ol Took 
very fine-ly! Considered, by the doctor, a remarkably 
beautiful chi-ildl Equal to the general run of children 
at five months o-old! Takes notice, in a way quite won- 
der-full May seem impossible to you, but feels his legs 
al-readyl” 

Here the breathless little mother, who had been shriek- 
ing these short sentences into the old man’s ear, until her 
pretty face was crimsoned, held up the Baby before him 
as a stubborn and triumphant fact; while Tilly Slowboy, 
with a melodious cry of “Ketcher, Ketcher” — which 
sounded like some unknown words, adapted to a popular 
Sneeze — performed some cow-like gambols round that all- 
unconscious Innocent. 

“Hark! He’s called for, sure enough,” said John. 
“There’s somebody at the door. Open it, Tilly.” 

Before she could reach it, however, it was opened from 
without; being a primitive sort of door, with a latch, that 
any one could lift if he chose — and a good many people did 
choose, I can tell you; for all kinds of neighbours liked to 
have a cheerful word or two with the Carrier, though he 
was no great talker himself. Being opened, it gave ad- 
mission to a little meagre, thoughtful dingy-faced man, 
who seemed to have made himself a great-coat from the 
sack-cloth covering of some old box; for when he turned to 
shut the door, and keep the weather out, he disclosed upon 
the back of that garment, the inscription G & T in large 
black capitals. Also the word GLASS in bold characters. 

“Good evening, John!” said the little man. “Good 
evening. Mum. Good evening, Tilly. Good evening. 
Unbeknown! How’s Baby, Mum? Boxer’s pretty well 
I hope?” 

“All thriving, Caleb,” replied Dot. “I am sure you 
need only to look at the dear child, for one, to know that.” 

“And I’m sure I need onlv look at you for another,” said 
Caleb. 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


He didn’t look at her though; he had a wandering and 
thoughtful eye which seemed to be always projecting itself 
into some other time and place, no matter what he said; a 
description which will equally apply to his voice. 

5 “Or at John for another,,” said Caleb. “Or at Tilly, as 
far as that goes. Or certainly at Boxer.” 

“Busy just now, Caleb ?” asked the Carrier. 

“Why, pretty well, John,” he returned, with the dis- 
traught air of a man who was casting about for the Philoso- 
10 pher’s stone, at least. “Pretty much so. There’s rather a 
run on Noah’s Arks at present. I could have wished to 
improve upon the Family, but I don’t see how it’s to be 
done at the price. It would be a satisfaction to one’s mind, 
to make it clearer which was Shems and Hams, and which 
15 was Wives. Flies an’t on that scale neither, as compared 
with elephants you know ! Ah 1 well ! Have you got any- 
thing in the parcel line for me, John ?” 

The Carrier put his hand into a pocket of the coat he had 
taken off ; and brought out, carefully preserved in moss and 
20 paper, a tiny flower-pot. 

“There it is!” he said, adjusting it with great care. 
“Not so much as a leaf damaged. Full of buds I” 

Caleb’s dull eye brightened, as he took it, and thanked 
him. 

26 “Dear, Caleb,” said the Carrier. “Very dear at this ■ 
season.” 

“Never mind that. It would be cheap to me, whatever 
it cost,” returned the little man. “Anything else, John?” 

“A small box,” replied the Carrier. “Here you are!” 

30 “ ‘For Caleb Plummer,’ ” said the little man, spelling out 

the direction. “‘With Cash.’ With Cash, John. I don’t 
think it’s for me.” 

“With Care,” returned the Carrier, looking over his 
shoulder. “Where do you make out cash ?” 

35 “Oh! To be sure!” said Caleb. “It’s all right. With 
care! Yes, yes; that’s mine. It might have been with 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


213 


cash, indeed, if my dear Boy in the Golden South Ameidcas 
had lived, John. You loved him like a son; didn't you? 
You needn’t say you did. I know, of course. ‘Caleb 
Plummer. With care.’ Yes, yes, it’s all right. It^s a 
box of dolls’ eyes for my daughter’s work. I wish it was 
her own sight in a box, John.” 

“1 wish it was, or could be !” cried the Carrier. 

“Thank’ ee,” said the little man. “You speak very 
hearty. To think that she should never see the Dolls — 
and them a-staring at her, so bold, all day long! That’s 
where it cuts. What’s the damage, John ?” 

“I’ll damage you,” said John, “if you inquire. Dot! 
Very near?” 

“Well! it’s like you to say so,” observed the little man. 
“It’s your kind way. Let me see. I think that’s all.” 

“I think not,” said the Carrier. “Try again.” 

“Something for our Governor, eh?” said Caleb, after 
pondering a little while. “To be sure. That’s what I came 
for; but my head’s so running on them Arks and things! 
He hasn’t been here, has he ?” 

“Not he,” returned the Carrier. “He’s too busy, 
courting.” 

“He’s coming round though,” said Caleb; “for he told 
me to keep on the near side of the road going home, and it 
was ten to one he’d take me up. I had better go, by the 
bye. — You couldn’t have the goodness to let me pinch 
Boxer’s tail. Mum, for half a moment, could you ?” 

“Why, Caleb ! what a question!” 

“Oh, never mind. Mum,” said the little man. “He 
mightn’t like it perhaps. There’s a small order just come 
in, for barking dogs; and I should wish to go as close to 
Natur’ as I could, for sixpence. That’s all. Never mind, 
Mum.” 

It happened opportunely, that Boxer, without receiving 
the proposed stimulus, began to bark with great zeal. But 
as this implied the approach of some new visitor, Caleb, 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


postponing his study from the life to a more convenient 
season, shouldered the round box, and took a hurried leave. 
He might have spared himself the trouble, for he met the 
visitor upon the threshold. 

“Oh! You are here, are you? Wait a bit. I’ll take 
you home. John Peerybingle, my service to you. More of 
my service to your pretty wife. Handsomer every day! 
Better too, if possible! And younger,” mused the speaker, 
in a low voice; “that’s the Devil of it!” 

“I should be astonished at your paying compliments, 
Mr. Tackleton,” said Dot, not with the best grace in the 
world; “but for your condition.” 

“You know all about it then ?” 

“I have got myself to believe it, somehow,” said Dot 

“After a hard struggle, I suppose ?” 

“Very.” 

Tackleton the Toy-merchant, pretty generally known as 
Gruff and Tackleton — for that was the firm, though Gruff 
had been bought out long ago ; only leaving his name, and 
as some said his nature, according to its Dictionary meaning 
in the business — Tackleton the Toy-merchant, was a man 
whose vocation had been quite misunderstood by his Par- 
ents and Guardians. If they had made him a Money 
Lender, or a sharp Attorney, or a Sheriff’s Officer, or a 
Broker, he might have sown his discontented oats in his 
youth, and, after having had the full run of himself in ill- 
natured transactions, might have turned out amiable, at 
last, for the sake of a little freshness and novelty. But, 
cramped and chafing in the peaceable pursuit of toy-making, 
he was a domestic Ogre, who had been living on children 
all his life, and was their implacable enemy. He despised 
all toys; wouldn’t have bought one for the world; delighted, 
in his malice, to insinuate grim expressions into the faces of 
brown-paper farmers who drove pigs to market, bell-men 
who advertised lost lawyers’ consciences, movable old 
ladies who darned stockings or carved pies; and other like 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


215 


samples of his stock in trade. In appalling masks; hideous 
hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes; Vampire Kites ; demoniacal 
Tumblers who wouldn’t lie down, and were perpetually 
flying forward, to stare infants out of countenance; his soul 
perfectly revelled. They were his only relief, and safety- 
valve. He was great in such inventions. Anything sug- 
gestive of a Pony-nightmare, was delicious to him. He 
had even lost money (and he took to that toy very kindly) 
by getting up Goblin slides for magic-lanterns, whereon 
the Powers of Darkness were depicted as a sort of super- 
natural shell-fish, with human faces. In intensifying the 
portraiture of Giants, he had sunk quite a little capital; 
and, though no painter himself, he could indicate, for the 
instruction of his artists, with a piece of chalk, a certain fur- 
tive leer for the countenances of those monsters, which was 
safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentleman 
between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas 
or Midsummer Vacation. 

What he was in toys, he was (as most men are) in all 
other things. You may easily suppose, therefore, that 
within the green cape, wTich reached dowm to the calves of 
his legs, there w'as buttoned up to the chin an uncommonly 
pleasant fellow^; and that he was about as choice a spirit, 
and as agreeable a companion, as ever stood in a pair of 
bull-headed looking boots with mahogany-coloured tops. 

Still, Tackleton, the Toy-merchant, w^as going to be 
married. In spite of all this, he was going to be married. 
And to a young wdfe too; a beautiful young wdfe. 

He didn’t look much like a bridegroom, as he stood in 
the Carrier’s kitchen, wdth a twdst in his dry face, and a 
screw in his body, and his hat jerked over the bridge of his 
nose, and his hands tucked down into the bottoms of his 
pockets, and his whole sarcastic ill-conditioned self peering 
out of one little corner of one little eye, like the concen- 
trated essence of any number of ravens. But, a bride- 
groom he designed to be. 


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THE CKICKET OX THE HEARTH 


“In three days’ time. Next Thiirsilay. The last day of 
the first month in the year. That’s my wedding-day/’ said 
Tackleton. 

Did I mention that he had always one eye wide open, 
5 and one eye nearly shut; and that the one eye nearly shut, 
was always the expressive eye ? 1 don’t think I did. 

“That’s my wedding-day!” said Tackleton, rattling his 
money. 

“Why, it’s our wedding-day too,” exclaimed the Carrier. 
10 “Ha, ha!” laughed Tackleton. “Odd! You’re just 
such another couple. Just!” 

The indignation of Dot at this presumptuous assertion 
is not to be described. What next? His imagination 
would compass the possibility of just such another Baby, 
15 perhaps. The man was mad. 

“I say! a word with you,” murmured Tackleton, nudging 
the Carrier with his elbow, and taking him a little ai)art. 
“You’ll come to thi? wedding? We’re in the same Vioat, 
you know.” 

20 “How in the same boat ?” incpiired the Carrier. 

“A little disparity, you know;” said Tackleton, with 
another nudge. “Come and spend an evening with us, 
beforehand.” 

“Why?” demanded John, astonished at this pressing 
25 hospitality. 

“Why?” returned the other. “That’s a new way of re- 
ceiving an invitation. Why, for pleasure; sociability, 
you know, and all that !” 

“I thought you were never sociable,” said John, in his 
30 plain way. 

“Tchah! It’s of no use to be anything but free with you 
I see,” said Tackleton. “Why, then, the truth is you have 
a — what tea-drinking people call a sort of a comfortable ap- 
pearance together: you and your wife. We know better, 
35 you know, but ” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


217 


“No, we don’t know better,” interposed John. “What 
are you talking about ?” 

“Well! We don’t know better, then,” said Tackleton. 
“^^e’ll agree that we don’t. As you like; what does it 
matter? I was going to say, as you have that sort of 5 
appearance, your company will produce a favourable 
effect on Mrs. Tackleton that will be. And, though i 
don’t think your good lady’s very friendly to me, in this 
matter, still she can’t help herself from falling into my 
views, for there’s a compactness and cosiness of appear- 10 
ance about her that always tells, even in an indifferent 
case. You’ll say you’ll come?” 

“We have arranged to keep our Wedding-Day (as far 
as that goes) at home,” said John. “We have made the 
promise to ourselves these six months. We think, you is 
see, that home — ” 

“Bah! what’s home?” cried Tackleton. “Four walls 
and a ceiling! (why don’t you kill that Cricket; I would! 

1 always do. I hate their noise.) There are four walls 
and a ceiling at my house. Come to me!” 20 

“You kill your Crickets, eh?” said John. 

“Scrunch ’em. Sir,” returned the other, setting his heel 
heavily on the floor. “You’ll say you’ll come? It’s as 
much your interest as mine, you know, that the women 
should persuade each other that they’re quiet and con- 25 
tented, and couldn’t be better off. I know their way. 
Whatever one woman says, another woman is deter- 
mined to clinch, always. There’s that spirit of emulation 
among ’em, Sir, that if your wife says to my wife, ‘Fm 
the happiest woman in the world, and mine’s the best 3o 
husband in the world, and I dote on him,’ my wife will say 
the same to yours, or more, and half believe it.” 

“Do you mean to say she don’t, then?” asked the 
Carrier. 

“Don’t!” cried Tackleton, with a short, sharp laugh. 
“Don’t what?” 


35 


218 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


The Carrier had had some faint idea of adding, “dote 
upon you.” But happening to meet the half-closed eye, 
as it twinkled upon him over the turned-up collar of the 
cape, which was within an ace of poking it out, he felt it 
5 such an unlikely part and parcel of anything to be doted 
on, that he substituted, “that she don’t believe it?” 

“Ah, you dog! You’re joking,” said Tackleton. j 

But the Carrier, though slow to understand the full I 
drift of his meaning, eyed him in such a serious manner 
10 that he was obliged to be a little more explanatory. 

“I have the humour,” said Tackleton: holding up the 
fingers of his left hand, and tapping the forefinger, to j 
imply ‘there I am, Tackleton to wit:’ “I have the humour. 

Sir, to marry a young wife and a pretty wife:” here he 
15 rapped his little finger, to express the Bride ; not sparingly, | 
but sharply; with a sense of power. “I’m able to gratify 
that humour and I do. It’s my whim. But — now look 
there.” 

He pointed to where Dot was sitting, thoughtfully, 

20 before the fire; leaning her dimpled chin upon her hand, 
and watching the bright blaze. The Carrier looked at ] 

her, and then at him, and then at her, and then at him j 

again. I 

“She honours and obeys, no doubt, you know,” said 
25 Tackleton; “and that, as I am not a man of sentiment, 
is quite enough for me. But do you think there’s anything 
more in it?” 

“I think,” observed the Carrier, “that I should chuck ] 
any man out of window, who said there wasn’t.” j 

80 “Exactly so,” returned the other with an unusual j 
alacrity of assent. “To be sure! Doubtless you would. j 
Of course. I’m certain of it. Good night. Pleasant ! 
dreams!” 

The good Carrier was puzzled, and made uncomfortable 
35 and uncertain, in spite of himself. He couldn’t help 
showing it, in his manner. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


219 


“Good night, my dear friend!” said Tackleton, com- 
passionately. “I’m off. We’re exactly alike, in reality, 

I see. You won’t give us to-mofrow evening? Well! 
Next day you go out visiting, I know. I’ll meet you 
there, and bring my wife that is to be. It’ll do her good. .5. 
You’re agreeable? Thank’ ee. What’s that!” 

It was a loud cry from the Carrier’s wife; a loud, sharp, 
sudden cry, that made the room ring, like a glass vessel. 
She had risen from her seat, and stood like one transfixed 
by terror and surprise. The Stranger had advanced 10 
towards the fire to warm himself, and stood within a short 
stride of her chair. But quite still. 

“Dot!” cried the Carrier. “Mary! Darling! What’s 
the matter ?” 

They were all about her in a moment. Caleb, who had 15. 
been dozing on the cake-box, in the first imperfect recovery 
of his suspended presence of mind seized jNIiss Slowlx)y 
by the hair of her head, but immediately apologised. 

“Mary!” exclaimed the Carrier, supporting her in his 
arms. “Are you ill! What is it? Tell me dear!” 20 

She only answ^ered by beating her hands together, and 
falling into a wdld fit of laughter. Then, sinking from 
his grasp upon the ground, she covered her face with 
her apron, and vrept bitterly. And then she laughed 
again, and then she cried again; and then, she said how 25 
cold it was, and suffered him to lead her to the fire, where 
she sat down as before. The old man standing, as before; 
quite still. 

“I’m better, John,” she said. “I’m quite well now — 
I—” 30 

“John!” But John was on the other side of her. Why 
turn her face towards the strange old gentleman, as if 
addressing him! Was her brain wandering? 

“Only a fancy, John dear — a kind of shock — a some- 
thing coming suddenly before my eyes — I don’t know 35 
what it w^as. It’s quite gone; quite gone.” 


220 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


“Tin glad it’s gone,” muttered Tackleton, turning the 
expressive eye all round the room. “I wonder where 
it’s gone, and what it was. Humph ! Caleb, come here ! 
Who’s that with the grey hair ?” 

5 '‘I don’t know. Sir,” returned Caleb in a whisper. 

‘‘Never see him before, in all my life. A beautiful figure 
for a nut-cracker ; quite a new model. With a screw-jaw 
opening down into his waistcoat, he’d be lovely.” 

“Not ugly enough,” said Tackleton. 

10 “Or for a firebox, either,” observed Caleb, in deep 
contemplation, “what a model! Unscrew his head to put 
the matches in; turn him heels up’ards for the light; and 
what a firebox for a gentleman’s mantel-shelf just as he 
stands 1” 

15 “Not half ugly enough,” said Tackleton. “Nothing 
in him at all. Come! Bring that box! All right now, 
I hope?” 

“Oh, quite gone! Quite gone!” said the little woman, 
waving him hurriedly away. “Good night!” 

20 “Good night,” said Tackleton. “Good night, John 
Peerybingle! Take care how you carry that box, Caleb. 
Let it fall, and I’ll murder you! Dark as pitch, and 
weather worse than ever, eh? Good night!” 

So, with another sharp look round the room, he went 
25 out at the door; followed by Caleb with the wedding-cake 
on his head. 

The Carrier had been so much astounded by his little 
wife, and so busily engaged in soothing and tending her, 
that he had scarcely been conscious of the Stranger’s 
30 presence, until now, when he again stood there, their 
only guest. 

“He don’t belong to them, you see,” said John. “I 
must give him a hint to go.” 

“I beg your pardon, friend,” said the old gentleman, 
35 advancing to him; “the more so, as I fear your wdfe has 
not been well; but the Attendant whom my infirmity,” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


221 


he touched his ears and sliook his head, “renders almost 
indispensable, not having arrived, I fear there must be 
some mistake. The bad night which made the shelter 
of your comfortable cart (may I never have a worse!) 
so acceptable, is still as liad as ever. Would you, in your 5 
kindness, suffer me to rent a bed here?” 

“Yes, yes,” cried Dot. “Yes! Certainly!” 

“Oh!” said the Carrier, surprised by the rapidity of 
this consent. “Well! I don’t object; but still I’m not 
quite sure that — ” 10 

“Hush!” she interrupted. “Dear John!” 

“Why, he’s stone deaf,” urged John. 

“1 know he is, but — Yes, Sir, certainly. Yes! certainly! 
ril make him up a bed, directly, John.” 

As she hurried off to do it, the flutter of her spirits, and 15 
the agitation of her manner, were so strange, that the 
Carrier stood looking after her, quite confounded. 

“Did its mothers make it up a Beds then!” cried Miss 
Slowboy to the Baby; “and did its hair grow brown and 
curly, when its caps was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious 20 
Pets, a sitting by the fires!” 

With that unaccountable attraction of the mind to 
trifles, which is often incidental to a state of doubt and 
confusion, the Carrier, as he walked slowly to and fro, 
found himself mentally repeating even these absurd words, 25 
many times. So many times that he got them by heart, 
and was still conning them over and over, like a lesson, 
when Tilly, after administering as much friction to the 
little bald head with her hand as she thought wholesome 
(according to the practice of nurses), had once more tied 30 
the Baby’s cap on. 

“And frightened it a precious Pets, a sitting by the fire. 
What frightened Dot, 1 wonder!” mused the Carrier, 
pacing to and fro. 

He scouted, from his heart, the insinuations of the a 5 
Toy-merchant, and yet they filled him with a vague, 


222 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


indefinite uneasiness; for Tackleton was quick and sly; 
and he had that painful sense, himself, of being a man 
of slow perception, that a broken hint was always worrying 
to him. He certainly had no intention in his mind of 
5 linking anything that Tackleton had said, with the unusual 
conduct of his wife; but the two subjects of reflection 
came into his mind together, and he could not keep them 
asunder. 

The bed w^as soon made ready; and the visitor, declining 
10 all refreshment but a cup of tea, retired. Then Dot: 
quite w^ell again, she said: quite w^ell again: arranged the 
great chair in the chimney-corner for her husband; filled 
his pipe and gave it him; and took her usual little stool 
beside him on the hearth. 

15 She always would sit on that little stool; I think she 
must have had a kind of notion that it was a coaxing, 
wheedling, little stool. 

She w^as, out and out, the very best filler of a pipe, I 
should say, in the four quarters of the globe. To see her 
20 put that chubby little finger in the bowl, and then blow' 
down the pipe to clear the tube; and, when she had done 
so, affect to think that there w'as really something in the 
tube, and blow' a dozen times, and hold it to her eye like 
a telescope, with a most provoking twdst in her capital 
25 little face, as she looked down it; was quite a brilliant 
thing. As to the tobacco, she was perfect mistress of 
the subject; and her lighting of the pipe, with a wdsp of 
paper, when the Carrier had it in his mouth — going so 
very near his nose, and yet not scorching it — was Art: 
30 high Art, Sir. 

And the Cricket and the Kettle, turning up again, 
acknowledged it! The bright fire, blazing up again, 
acknowledged it! The little Mower on the clock, in his 
unheeded w'ork, acknowledged it! The Carrier, in his 
35 smoothing forehead and expanding face, acknowledged 
it, the readiest of all. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


223 


x\nd as he soberly and thoughtfully puffed at his old 
pipe; and as the Dutch clock ticked; and as the red fire 
gleamed; and as the Cricket chirped; that Genius of his 
Hearth and Home (for such the Cricket was) came out, 
in faivy shape, into the room, and summoned many forms 5 
of Home about him. Dots of all ages, and all sizes, 
filled the chamber. Dots who were merry children, 
running on before him, gathering flowers, in the fields; 
coy Dots, half shrinking from, half yielding to, the pleading 
of his own rough image; newly-married Dots, alighting 10. 
at the door, and taking wondering possession of the house- 
hold keys; motherly little Dots, attended by fictitious Slow- 
boys, bearing babies to be christened; matronly Dots, still 
young and blooming, watching Dots of daughters, as 
they danced at rustic balls; fat Dots, encircled and beset 15 
by troops of rosy grand-children; withered Dots, who 
leaned on sticks, and tottered as they crept along. Old 
Carriers too, appeared, with blind old Boxers lying at 
their feet; and newer carts with younger drivers (“Peery- 
bingle Brothers” on the tilt); and sick old Carriers, 20 
tended by the gentlest hands ; and graves of dead and gone 
old Carriers, green in the churchyard. And as the 
Cricket showed him all these things — 'he saw them plainly, 
though his eyes were fixed upon the fire — the Carrier’s 
heart grew light and happy, and he thanked his House- 25 
hold Gods with all his might, and cared no more for 
Gruff and Tackleton than you do. 

But what was that young figure of ‘a man, which the 
same Fairy Cricket set so near Her stool, and which 
remained there, singly and alone? Why did it linger still, 30 
so near her, with its arm upon the chimney-piece, ever 
repeating “Married! and not to me!” 

Oh Dot! Oh failing Dot! There is no place for it 
in all your husband’s visions; why has its shadow fallen 
on his hearth! 35 


CHIRP THE SECOND 


Caleb Plummeu and liis Blind Daughter lived all alone 
by themselves, as the Story-books say — and my blessing, 
with yours to back it I hope, on the Story-books, for say- 
ing anything in this workaday world! — (^aleb Plummer 
s and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by themselves, in a 
little cracked nutshell of a wooden house, which was, in 
truth, no better than a pimple on the prominent red-brick 
nose of Gruff and Tackleton. The premises of Gruff and 
Tackleton were the great feature of the street; but you 
10 might have knocked down Caleb Plummer’s dwelling with 
a hammer or two, and carried off the pieces in a cart. 

If any one had done the dwelling house of Caleb Plum- 
mer the honour to miss it after such an inroad, it would 
have been, no doubt, to commend its demolition as a vast 
15 improvement. It stuck to the premises of Gruff and 
Tackleton, like a barnacle to a ship’s keel, or a snail to a 
door, or a little bunch of toadstools to the stem of a tree. 
But it was the germ from wdiich the full-grown trunk of 
Gruff and Tackleton had sprung; and under its crazy roof, 
20 the Gruff before last had, in a small way, made toys for a 
generation of old boys and girls, who had played with them, 
and found them out, and broken them, and gone to sleep. 

I have said that Caleb and his poor Blind Daughter 
lived here; I should have said that Caleb lived here, and 
25 his poor Blind Daughter somewhere else ; in an enchanted 
home of Caleb’s furnishing, where scarcity and shabbiness 
were not, and trouble never entered. Caleb was no sor- 
cerer, but in the only magic art that still remains to us : the 
magic of devoted, deathless love; Nature had been the 
30 mistress of his study; and from her teaching all the wonder 
came. 


THE CKK’KKT ON THE HEARTH 


225 


The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were discol- 
oured; walls blotched and bare of plaster here and there; 
high crevices unstopped and widening every day; beams 
inonldering and tending downward. The Blind Girl 
never knew that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peel- 
ing olf; the very size, and shape, and true proportion of the 
dwelling, withering away. The Blind Girl never knew 
that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board; 
that sorrow and faintheartedness were in the house; that 
C'aleb’s scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey, 
before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew 
they had a master, cold, exacting, and uninterested: never 
knew that Tackleton was Tackleton in short; but lived in 
the belief of an eccentric humourist who loved to have his 
jest with them; and who while he was the Guardian Angel 
of their lives, disdained to hear one. word of thankfulne.ss. 

And all was Caleb’s doing; all the doing of her simple 
father! But he too had a Cricket on his Hearth; and 
listening sadly to its music when the motherless Blind 
Child was very young, that Spirit had inspired him with 
the thought that even her great deprivation might be al- 
most changed into a blessing, and the girl made happy by 
these little means. For all the Cricket Tribe are potent 
Spirits, even though the peo])le who hold converse with 
them do not know it (which is frequently the case); and 
there are not in the Tnseen World, Voices more gentle and 
more true; that may be so im])licitly relied on, or that are 
so certain to give none but tenderest coun.sel ; as the Voices 
in which the Spirits of the Fireside and the Hearth address 
themselves to human kind. 

Caleb and his daughter were at work together in their 
usual working-room, which served them for their ordinary 
living-room as well; and a strange place it was. There 
were houses in it, finished and unfinished, for Dolls of all 
stations in life. Suburban tenements for Dolls of moder- 
ate means; kitchens and single apartments for Dolls of the 


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25 

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35 


226 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


lower classes; capital town residences for Dolls of high 
estate. Some of these establishments were already furn- 
ished according to estimate, with a view to the convenience 
of Dolls of limited incotne; others could be fitted on the 
5 most expensive scale, at a moment’s notice, from whole 
shelves of chairs and tables, sofas, bedsteads, and uphol- 
stery. The nobility and gentry and public in general, for 
whose accommodation these tenements were designed, lay, 
here and there, in baskets, staring straight up Rt the ceiling ; 
10 but in denoting their degrees in society, and confining them 
to their respective stations (which experience shows to be 
lamentably difficult in real life), the makers of these Dolls 
had far improved on Nature, who is often froward and 
perverse; for. they, not resting on such arbitrary marks as 
15 satin, cotton-print, and bits of rag, had superadded strik- 
ing personal differences which allowed of no mistake. 
Thus, the Doll-lady of Distinction had wax limbs of 
t^erfect symmetry ; but only she and her compeers ; the next 
grade in the social scale being made of leather; and the 
20 next of coarse linen stuff. As to the common-people, they 
had just so many matches out of tinder-boxes for their 
arms and legs, and there they were — established in their 
sphere at once, beyond the possibility of getting out of it. 

There were various other samples of his handicraft^ 
26 besides Dolls, in Caleb Plummer’s room. There were 
Noah’s Arks, in which the Birds and Beasts were an un- 
commonly tight fit, I assure you; though they could be 
crammed in, anyhow, at the roof, and rattled and shaken 
into the smallest eompass. By a bold poetical license, 
3p most of these Noah’s Arks had knockers on the doors; 
inconsistent appendages perhaps, as suggestive of morning 
callers and a Postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside 
of the building. There were scores of melancholy little 
carts which, when the wheels went round, performed most 
35 doleful music. Alany small fiddles, drums, and other in- 
struments of torture; no end of cannon, shields, swords, 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


227 


spears and guns. There were little tumblers in red 
breeches, incessantly swarming up high obstacles of red- 
tape, and coming down, head first, on the other side; and 
there were innumerable old gentlemen of respectable, not 
to say venerable appearance, insanely flying over horizon- 
tal pegs, inserted for the purpose, in their own street doors. 
There were beasts of all sorts; horses, in particular, of 
every breed, from the spotted barrel on four pegs, with a 
small tippet for a mane, to the thoroughbred rocker on his 
highest mettle. As it would have been hard to count the 
dozens upon dozens of grotesque figures that were ever 
ready to commit all sorts of absurdities on the turning of 
a handle ; so it would have been no easy task to mention any 
human folly, vice or weakness, that had not its type, imme- 
diate or remote, in Caleb Plummer’s room. And not in an 
exaggerated form; for very little handles will move men 
and women to as strange performances, as any Toy was 
ever made to undertake. 

In the midst of all these objects, Caleb and his daughter 
sat at work. The Blind Girl busy as a Doll’s dressmaker; 
Caleb painting and glazing the four-pair front of a desir- 
able family mansion. 

The care imprinted in the lines of Caleb’s face, and his 
absorbed and dreamy manner, which would have sat well 
on some alchemist or abstruse student, were at first sight 
an odd contrast to his occupation, and the trivialities about 
him. But trivial things, invented and pursued for bread, 
become very serious matters of fact; and, apart from this 
consideration, I am not at all prepared to say, myself, that 
if Caleb had been a Lord Chamberlain, or a Member of 
Parliament, or a lawyer, or even a great speculator, he 
would have dealt in toys one whit less whimsical; while I 
have a very great doubt whether they would have been as 
harmless. 

“So you were out in the rain last night, father, in your 
beautiful, new, great-coat,” said Caleb’s daughter. 


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“In my beautiful new great-coat,” answered Caleb, 
glancing towards a clothes-line in the room, on which the 
sack-cloth garment previously described, was carefully 
hung up to dry. 

5 “How glad 1 am you bought it, father!” 

“And of such a tailor, too,” said Caleb. “Quite a fash- 
ionable tailor. It’s too good for me I” 

The Blind Girl rested from her work, and laughed with 
delight, “Too good, father! What can be too good for 
10 you?” 

“I’m half ashamed to wear it though,” said Caleb, 
watching the effect of what he said, upon her brightening 
face; “upon my word. When I hear the boys and people 
say behind me, ‘Halloa! Here’s a swell!’ I don’t know 
15 which way to look. And when the beggar wouldn’t go 
away last night; and, when I said I was a very common 
man, said ‘No, your Honour! Bless your Honour, don’t 
say that!’ I was quite ashamed. I really felt as if I hadn’t 
a right to wear it.” 

20 Happy Blind Girl ! How merry she was, in her exulta- 
tion ! 

“I see you, father,” she said, clasping her hands, “as 
plainly, as if I had the eyes I never want when you are with 

me. A blue coat ” 

26 “Bright blue,” said Caleb. 

“Yes, yes! Bright blue! exclaimed the girl, turning up 
her radiant face; “the colour I can just remember in the 
blessed sky! You told me it was blue before! A bright 
blue coat ” 

30 “Made loose to the figure,” suggested Caleb. 

“Yes! Loose to the figure!” cried the Blind Girl, laugh- 
ing heartily; “and in it you, dear father, with your merry 
eye, your smiling face, your free step, and your dark hair: 
looking so young and handsome!” 

“Halloa! Halloa!” said Caleb. “I shall be vain, pres- 
ently.” 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


229 


“1 think you are, already,” cried the Blind Girl, pointing 
at him, in her glee. “I know you, father! Ha ha ha! 
I’ve found you out, you see!” 

How different the picture in her mind, from Caleb, as he 
sat observing her! She had spoken of his free step. She 5 
was right in that. For years and years, he never once had 
crossed that threshold at his own slow pace, but with a 
footfall counterfeited for her ear; and never had he, when 
his heart was heaviest, forgotten the light tread that was to 
render hers so cheerful and courageous ! lo 

Heaven knows! But I think Caleb’s vague bewilder- 
ment of manner may have half originated in his having 
confused himself about himself and everything around him, 
for the love of his Blind Daughter. Ho\r could the little 
man be otherwise than bev/ildered, after labouring for so 15 
many years to destroy his own identity, and that of all the 
objects that had any bearing on it! 

‘‘There we are,” said Caleb, falling back a pace or two to 
form the better judgment of his work; “as near the real 
thing as sixpenn’orth of halfpence is to sixpence. What 20 
a pity that the whole front of the house opens at once ! If 
there was only a staircase in it now, and regular doors to 
the rooms to go in at ! But that’s the worst of my calling, 
I’m always deluding myself, and swindling myself.” 

“You are speaking quite softly. You are not tired, 25 
father?” 

“Tired,” echoed Caleb, with a great burst of animation, 
“what should tire me, Bertha? I was never tired. What 
does it mean ?” 

To give the greater force to his words, he checked him- sa 
self in an involuntary imitation of two half-length stretch- 
ing and yawning figures on the mantel-shelf, who were rep- 
resented as in one eternal state of weariness from the w aist 
upwards; and hummed a fragment of a song. It w^'as a 
Bacchanalian song, something about a Sparkling BoavI; 3.5 
and he sang it with an assumption of a Devil-may-care 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


voice, that made his face a thousand times more meagre 
and more thoughtful than ever. 

“What! You’re singing, are you?” said Tackleton, 
putting his head in, at the door. “Go it! I can’t sing.” 

5 Nobody would have suspected him of it. He hadn’t 
what is generally termed a singing face, by any means. 

“I can’t afford to sing,” said Tackleton. “I’m glad you 
can. I hope you can afford to work too. Hardly time for 
both, I should think?” 

10 “If you could only see him, Bertha, how he’s winking at 
me!” whispered Caleb. “Such a man to joke! you’d think, 
if you didn’t know him, he was in earnest — wouldn’t you 
now ?” 

The Blind Girl smiled, and nodded. 

15 “The bird that can sing and won’t sing, must be made to 
sing, they say,” grumbled Tackleton. “What about the 
owl that can’t sing, and oughtn’t to sing, and will sing; is 
there anything that he should be made to do ?” 

“The extent to which he’s winking at this moment!” 

80 whispered Caleb to his daughter. “Oh, my gracious!” 

“Always merry and light-hearted with us!” cried the 
smiling Bertha. 

“Oh, you’re there, are you?” answered Tackleton. 
“Poor Idiot!” 

25 He really did believe she was an Idiot; and he founded 
the belief, I can’t say whether consciously or not, upon her 
being fond of him. 

‘Well! and being there, how are you?” said Tackleton; 
in his grudging way. 

30 “Oh! well; quite well. And as happy as even you can 
wish me to be. As happy as you would make the whole 
world, if you could !” 

“Poor Idiot!” muttered Tackleton. “No gleam of 
reason. Not a gleam!” 

S5 The Blind Girl took his hand and kissed it ; held it for a 
moment in her own two hands; and laid her cheek against 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


231 


it tenderly, before releasing. There was such unspeak- 
able affection and such fervent gratitude in the act, that 
Tackleton himself was moved to say, in a milder growl 
than usual: 

“What’s the matter now?” 

“I stood it close beside my pillow when I went to sleep 
last night, and remembered it in my dreams. And when 
the day broke, and the glorious red sun — the red sun, 
father?” 

“Red in the mornings and the evenings, Bertha,” 
said poor Caleb, with a woeful glance at his employer. 

“When it rose, and the bright light I almost fear to 
strike myself against in walking, came into the room, I 
turned the little tree towards it, and blessed Heaven for 
making things so precious, and blessed you for sending 
them to cheer me!” 

“Bedlam broke loose!” said Tackleton under his 
breath. “We shall arrive at the strait-waistcoat and 
mufflers soon. We’re getting on!” 

Caleb, with his hands hooked loosely in each other, 
stared vacantly before him while his daughter spoke, as 
if he really were uncertain (I believe he was) whether 
Tackleton had done anything to deserve her thanks, 
or not. If he could have been a perfectly free agent, at 
that moment, required, on pain of death, to kick the Toy- 
merchant, or fall at his feet, according to his merits, 
I believe it would have been an even chance which course 
he would have taken. Yet Caleb knew that with his own 
hands he had brought the little rose-tree home for her, 
so carefully; and that with his own lips he had forged 
the innocent deception which should help to keep her from 
suspecting how much, how very much, he every day 
denied himself, that she might be the happier. 

“Bertha!” said Tackleton, assuming, for the nonce, 
a little cordiality. “Come here.” 


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“Oh! 1 can come straight to you! You needn’t guide 
me!” she rejoined. 

“Shall I tell you a secret, Bertha?” 

“If you will!” she answered, eagerly. 

How bright the darkened face! How adorned with 
light, the listening head! 

“This is the day on which little what’s-her-name, the 
spoilt child; Peerybingle’s wife; pays her regular visit 
to you — makes her fantastic Pic-Nic here; an’t it?” 
said Tackleton, with a strong expression of distaste for 
the whole concern. 

“Yes,” replied Bertha. “This is the day.” 

“I thought so!” said Tackleton. “I should like to 
join the party.” 

“Do you hear that, father!” cried the Blind Girl in 
an ecstasy. 

“Yes, yes, I hear it,” murmured Caleb, with the fixed 
look of a sleep-walker; “but I don’t believe it. It’s one 
of my lies. I’ve no doubt.” 

“You see I — I want to bring the Peerybingles a little 
more into company with May Fielding,” said Tackleton. 
“I am going to be married to May.” 

“Married!” cried the Blind Girl, starting from him. 

“She’s such a con-founded Idiot,” muttered Tackleton, 
“that I was afraid she’d never comprehend me. Ah, 
Bertha! Married! Church, parson, clerk, beadle, glass- 
coach, bells, breakfast, bride-cake, favours, marrow- 
bones, cleavers, and all the rest of the tomfoolery. A 
wedding, you know; a wedding. Don’t you know what 
a wedding is?” 

“I know,” replied the Blind Girl, in a gentle tone. “I 
understand!” 

“Do you?” muttered Tackleton. “It’s more than I 
expected. Well! On that account I want to join the 
party, and to bring May and her mother. I’ll send in 
a little something or other, before the afternoon. A cold 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


233 


leg of mutton, or some comfortable trifle of that sort. 
You’ll expect me ?” 

“Yes,” she answered. 

She had drooped her head, and turned away; and so 
Stood, with her hands crossed, musing. 5 

“I don’t think you will,” muttered Tackleton, looking 
at her; “for you seem to have forgotten all about it, 
already. Caleb!” 

“I may venture to say I’m here, I suppose,” thought 
Caleb. “Sir!” lo 

“Take care she don’t forget what I’ve been saying to 
her.” 

“(S/ie never forgets,” returned Caleb. “It’s one of the 
few things she an’t clever in.” 

“Every man thinks his own geese swans,” observed is 
the Toy-merchant, with a shrug. “Poor devil!” 

Having delivered himself of which remark, with infinite 
contempt, old Gruff and Tackleton withdrew. 

Bertha remained where he had left her, lost in medita- 
tion. The gaiety had vanished from her downcast face, 20 
and it was very sad. Three or four times, she shook 
her head, as if bewailing some remembrance or some loss ; 
but her sorrowful reflections found no vent in words. 

It was not until Caleb had been occupied, some time, 
in yoking a team of horses to a waggon by the summary 25 
process of nailing the harness to the vital parts of their 
bodies, that she drew near to his working-stool, and sitting 
down beside him, said: 

“Father, I am lonely in the dark. I want my eyes: 
my patient, willing eyes.” so 

“Here they are,” said Caleb. “Always ready. They 
are more yours than mine, Bertha, any hour in the four 
and twenty. What shall your eyes do for you, dear?” 

“Look round the room, father.” 

“All right,” said Caleb, “No sooner said than done, 35 
Bertha.” 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


“Tell me about it.’’ 

“It’s much the same as usual,” said Caleb. “Homely, 
but very snug. The gay colours on the wall; the bright | 
flowers on the plates and dishes; the shining wood, | 
5 where there are beams or panels; the general cheerfulness j 
and neatness of the building; make it very pretty.” j 

Cheerful and neat it was wherever Bertha’s hands j 
could busy themselves. But nowhere else were cheerful-, I 
ness and neatness possible, in the old crazy shed which 
10 Caleb’s fancy so transformed. 

“You have your working dress on, and are not so gallant 
as when you wear the handsome coat?” said Bertha, 
touching him. 

“Not quite so gallant,” answered Caleb. “Pretty 
15 brisk though.” 

“Father,” said the Blind Girl, drawing close to his side, 
and stealing one arm round his neck. “Tell me some- 
thing about May. She is very fair?” 

“She is indeed,” said Caleb. And she was indeed. 

20 It was quite a rare thing to Caleb, not to have to draw 
on his invention. 

“Her hair is dark,” said Bertha, pensively, “darker 
than mine. Her voice is sweet and musical, 1 know. 1 
have often loved to hear it. Her shape — ” 

25 “There’s not a Doll’s in all the room to equal it,” 
said Caleb. “And her eyes! — ” 

He stopped; for Bertha had drawn closer round his 
neck; and from the arm that clung about him, came a 
warning pressure which he understood too well, 
so He coughed a moment, hammered for a moment, and 
then fell back upon the song about the Sparkling Bowl; 
his infallible resource in all such difficulties. 

“Our fri^ nd, father; our benefactor. 1 am never tired, 
you know, of hearing about him. — Now was I, ever?” 

35 she said hastily. 

“Of course not,” answered Caleb. “And with reason.” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 235 

“Ah! With how much reason!” cried the Blind Girl. 
^^ ith such fervency, that Caleb, though his motives were 
so pure, could not endure to meet her face; but dropped 
his eyes as if she could have read in them his innocent 
deceit. 

“Then tell me again about him, dear father,” said 
Bertha. “Many times again! His face is benevolent, 
kind, and tender. Honest and true, I am sure it is. The 
manly heart that tries to cloak all favours with a show of 
roughness and unwillingness, beats in its every look and 
glance.” 

“And makes it noble,” added Caleb in his quiet des- 
peration. 

“x\nd makes it noble!” cried the Blind Girl. “He is 
older than May, father.” 

“Ye-es,” said Caleb, reluctantly. “He’s a little older 
than May. But that don’t signify.” 

“Oh father, yes! To be his patient companion in 
infirmity and age; to be his gentle nurse in sickness, and 
his constant friend in suffering and sorrow; to know no 
weariness in working for his sake ; to watch him, tend him ; 
sit beside his bed and talk to him, awake; and pray for 
him asleep; what privileges these would be! What 
opportunities for proving all her truth and devotion to him ! 
Would she do all this, dear father?” 

“No doubt of it,” said Caleb. 

“I love her, father; I can love her from my soul!” 
exclaimed the Blind Girl. And saying so, she laid her 
poor blind face on Caleb’s shoulder, and so wept and 
wept, that he was almost sorry to have brought that tearful 
happiness upon her. 

In the meantime, there had been a pretty sharp com- 
motion at John Peerybingle’s; for little Mrs. Peerybingle 
naturally couldn’t think of going anywhere without the 
Baby; and to get the Baby under weigh, took time. Not 
that there was much of the Baby; speaking of it as a 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


thing of weight and measure: but there was a vast deal i; 
to do about and about it, and it all had to be done by easy [ 
stages. For instance: when the Baby was got, by hook [ 
and by crook, to a certain point of dressing, and you | 
5 might have rationally supposed that another touch or two [ 
would finish him off, and turn him out a tip-top Baby | 
challenging the world, he was unexpectedly extinguished i 
in a fiannel cap, and hustled off to bed; where he sim- 
mered (so to speak) between two blankets for the best part 
10 of an hour. From this state of inaction he was then 
recalled, shining very much and roaring violently, to 
partake of well! I would rather say, if you’ll permit me 
to speak generally — of a slight repast. After which, he 
went to sleep again. INIrs. Peerybingle took advantage 
15 of this interval, to make herself as smart in a small way 
as ever you saw anybody in all your life; and, during the 
same short truce. Miss Slowboy insinuated herself into 
a spencer of a fashion so surprising and ingenious, that 
it had no connection with herself, or anything else in the 
20 universe, but AVas a shrunken, dog’s-eared, independent 
fact, pursuing its lonely course without the least regard 
to anybody. By this time, the Baby, being all alive again, 
was invested, by the united efforts of Mrs. Peerybingle and 
Miss Slowboy, Avith a cream-coloured mantle for its body, 

25 and a sort of nankeen raised-pie for its head; and so in 
course of time they all three got doAAui to the door, Avhere 
the old horse had already taken more than the full value 
of his day’s toll out of the Turnpike Trust, by tearing up 
the road with his impatient autographs — and whence 
so Boxer might be dimly seen in. the remote perspective, 
standing looking back, and tempting him to come on 
Avithout orders. 

As to a chair, or anything of that kind for helping . 
Mrs. Peerybingle into the cart, you knoAV very little of 
35 John, I fiatter myself, if you think that Avas necessary. 
Before you could have seen him lift her from the ground. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


237 


there she was in her place, fresh and rosy, saying, “John! 
How CAN you! Think of Tilly!” 

If I might be allowed to mention a young lady’s legs, on 
any terms, I would observe of Miss Slowboy’s that there 
was a fatality about them which rendered them singularly 
liable to be grazed ; and that she never effected the smallest 
ascent or descent, without recording the circumstance upon 
them with a notch, as Robinson Crusoe marked the days 
upon his wooden calendar. But as this might be con- 
sidered ungenteel. I’ll think of it. 

“John? You’ve got the basket with the Veal and 
Ham-Pie and things; and the bottles of Beer?” said Dot. 
“If you haven’t, you must turn round again, this very 
minute.” 

“You’re a nice little article,” returned the Carrier, 
“to be talking about turning round, after keeping me a 
full quarter of an hour behind my time.” 

“I am sorry for it, John,” said Dot in a great bustle, “but 
I really could not think of going to Bertha’s — I would not 
do it, John, on any account — without the Veal and Ham- 
Pie and things, and the bottles of Beer. Way!” 

This monosyllable was addressed to the horse, who didn’t 
mind it at all. 

“Oh do way, John!” said Mrs. Peerybingle. “Please!” 

“It’ll be time enough to do that,” returned John, “when 
I begin to leave things behind me. The basket’s here, 
safe enough.” 

“What a hard-hearted monster you must be, John, not 
to have said so, at once, and save me such a turn! I de- 
clared I wouldn’t go to Bertha’s without the Veal and Ham- 
Pie and things, and the bottles of Beer, for any money. 
Regularly once a fortnight ever since we have been mar- 
ried, John, have we made our little Pic-Nic there. If any- 
thing was to go wrong with it, I should almost think we 
were never to be lucky again.” 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


“It was a kind thought in the first instance,” said the 
Carrier ; “ and I honour you for it, little woman.” j 

“My dear John,” replied Dct, turning very red. “Don’t [ 
talk about honouring me. Good Gracious !” I 

“By the bye — ” observed the Carrier. “That old gentle- • ! 

man, ” | 

Again so visibly, and instantly embarrassed. I 

“He’s an odd fish,” said the Carrier, looking straight 
along the road before them. “I can’t make him out. I 
don’t believe there’s any harm in him.” 

“None at all. I’m — I’m sure there’s none at all.” ! 

“Yes?” said the Carrier, with his eyes attracted to her 
face by the great earnestness of her manner. “I am glad 
you feel so certain of it, because it’s a confirmation to me. 
It’s curious that he should have taken it into his head to 
ask leave to go on lodging with us; an’t it? Things come 
about so strangely.” 

“So very strangely,” she rejoined in a low voice; scarcely 
audible. 

“However, he’s a good-natured old gentleman,” said 
John, “and pays as a gentleman, and I think his word is 
to be relied upon, like a gentleman’s. I had quite a long 
talk with him this morning ; he can hear me better already, 
he says, as he gets more used to my voice. He told me a 
great deal about himself, and 1 told him a good deal about 
myself, and a rare lot of questions he asked me. I gave- 
him information about my having two beats, you know, in 
my business; one day to the right from our house and back 
again; another day to the left from our house and back 
again (for he’s a stranger and don’t know the names of ' 
places about here;) and he seemed quite pleased. ‘Why, 
then r shall be returning home to-night your way,’ he 
says, ‘when I thought you’d be coming in an exactly oppo- 
site direction. That’s capital. I may trouble you for an- 
other lift perhaps, but I’ll engage not to fall so sound a.sleep 


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THE CRICKET ON TliE HEARTH 


239 


again.’ He sound asleep, sure-lyl — Dot! what are 
you thinking of?” 

“Thinking of, John ? I — I was listening to you.” 

“Oh! That’s all right!” said the honest Carrier. “I 
was afraid, from the look of your face, that I had gone 
rambling on so long, as to set you thinking about some- 
thing else. I was very near it. I’ll be bound.” 

Dot making no reply, they jogged on, for some little 
time, in silence. But it was not easy to remain silent very 
long in John Peerybingle’s cart, for everybody on the road 
had something to say; though it might only be “How are 
you!” and indeed it was very often nothing else, still, to give 
that back again in the right spirit of cordiality, required, not 
merely a nod and a smile, but as wholesome an action of 
the lungs withal as a long-winded Parliamentary speech. 
Sometimes, passengers on foot, or horseback, plodded on a 
little way beside the cart, for the express purpose of hav- 
ing a chat; and then there was a great deal to be said on 
both sides. 

Then, Boxer gave occasion to more good-natured recog- 
nitions of and by the Carrier, than half-a-dozen Christians 
could have done? Everybody knew him, all along the 
road — especially the fowls and pigs, who when they saw 
him approaching, with his body all on one side, and his 
ears pricked up inquisitively, and that knob of a tail mak- 
ing the most of itself in the air, immediately withdrew into 
remote back settlements, without waiting for the honour of 
a nearer acquaintance. He had business everywhere; go- 
ing down all the turnings, looking into all the wells, bolting 
in and out of all the cottages, dashing into the midst of all 
the Dame-Schools, fluttering all the pigeons, magnifying 
the tails of all the cats, and trotting into the public-houses 
like a regular customer. Wherever he went, somebody or 
other might have been heard to cry, “Halloa! Here’s 
Boxer!” and out came that somebody forthwith, accom- 


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THE CRICKET OX THE HEARTH 


panied by at least two or three other somebodies, to give 
John Peerybingle and his pretty wife, Good Day. j 

The packages and parcels for the errand cart, were num- j 
erous; and there were many stoppages to take them in and j 
5 give them out ; w^hich were not by any means the worst parts 
of the journey. Some people were so full of expectation 
about their parcels, and other people were so full of wonder | 
about their parcels, and other people were so full of inex- j 
haustible directions about their parcels, and John had 
10 such a lively interest in all the parcels, that it was as good 
as a play. Likewise, there were articles to carry, which 
required to be considered and discussed, and in reference 
to the adjustment and disposition of Avhich, councils had to I 
be holden by the Carrier and the senders: at which Boxer 
15 usually assisted, in short fits of the closest attention, and 
long fits of tearing round and round the assembled sages 
and barking himself hoarse. Of all these little incidents. 
Dot was the amused and open-eyed spectatress from her 
chair in the cart; and as she sat there, looking on: a charming 
20 little portrait framed to admiration by the tilt: there was no 
lack of nudgings and glancings and whisperings and envy- 
ings among the younger men, 1 promise you. And this 
delighted John the Carrier, beyond measure; for he was 
proud to have his little wife admired; knowing that she 
25 didn’t mind it — that, if anything, she rather liked it per- 
haps. 

The trip was a little foggy, to be sure, in the January 
weather; and was raw and cold. But who cared for such 
trifles ? Not Dot, decidedly. Not Tilly Slowboy, for she 
30 deemed sitting in a cart, on any terms, to be the highest 
point of human joys; the crowning circumstance of earthly 
hopes. Not the Baby, I’ll be sworn; for it’s not in Baby 
nature to be warmer or more sound asleep, though its capac- 
ity is great in both respects, than that blessed young Peery- 
35 bingle was, all the way. 

You couldn’t see very far in the fog, of course; but you i 


TH?: CRICKET OX THE HEARTH 


241 


could see a great deal, oh, a great deal! It’s astonishing 
how much you may see in a thicker fog than that, if you will 
only take the trouble to look for it. Why even to sit watch- 
ing for the Fairy-rings in the fields, and for the patches of 
hoar-frost still lingering in the shade, near hedges and by 
trees, was a pleasant occupation: to make no mention of 
the unexpected shapes in which the trees themselves came 
.starting out of the mist, and glided into it again. The 
hedges Avere tangled and bare, and waved a multitude of 
blighted garlands in the Avind; but there was no discour- 
agement in this. It Avas agreeable to contemplate; for it 
made the fireside Avarmer in possession, and the summer 
greener in expectancy. The river looked chilly; but it was 
in motion, and moving at a good pace; AAhich Avas a great 
point. The canal Avas rather sIoav and torpid; that must 
be admitted. NeAW mind. It would freeze the sooner 
Avhen the frost set fairly in, and then there Avould be skat- 
ing, and sliding; and the heavy old barges, frozen up some- 
Avhere, near a wharf, Avould smoke their rusty iron chim- 
ney-pipes all day, and have a lazy time of it. 

Ill one place, there Avas a great mound of AA-'eeds or 
stubble burning; and they Avatched the fire, so Avhite in the 
day time, flaring through the fog, Avith only here and there 
a dash of red in it, until, in consequence as she observed 
of the smoke “getting up her nose,” Miss Slowboy choked 
— she could do anything of that sort on the smallest provo- 
cation — and Avoke the Baby, wdio AA’ouldn’t go to sFep again. 
But Boxer, Avho Avas in advance some quarter of a mile or 
so, had already passed the outposts of the toAvn, and gained 
the corner of the street where Caleb and his daughter lived ; 
and long before they reached the door, he and the Blind 
Girl Avere on the pavement Avaiting to receh^e them. 

Boxer, by the Avay, made certain delicate distinctions of 
his oAvn, in his communication with Bertha, AA^hich persuade 
me fully that he kneAV her to be blind. He never sought to 
attract her attention by looking at her, as he often did with 


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THE CRICKET ON THE .HEARTH 


. other people, but touched her, invariably. What experi- 
ence he could ever have had of blind people or blind dogs, I 
don’t know. He had never lived with a blind master; nor 
had Mr. Boxer the elder, nor Mrs. Boxer, nor any of his 
5 respectable family on either side, ever been visited with 
blindness, that I am aware of. He may have found it out 
for himself, perhaps, but he had got hold of it somehow; 
and therefore he had hold of Bertha too, by the skirt, and 
kept hold, until Mrs. Peerybingle and the Baby, and ^liss 
10 Slowboy, and the basket, were all got safely within doors. 

May Fielding was already come; and so was her mother 
— a little querulous chip of an old lady with a peevish face, 
who, in right of having preserved a waist like a bedpost, 
was supposed to be a most transcendent figure ; and who, in 
15 consequence of having once been better off, or of labouring 
under an impression that she might have been, if some- 
thing had happened which never did happen, and seemed 
to have never been particularly likely to come to pass — but 
it’s all the same — was very genteel and patronizing indeed. 
20 Gruff and Tackleton was also there, doing the agreeable, 
with the evident sensation of being as perfectly at home, 
and as unquestionably in his own element, as a fresh young 
salmon on the top of the Great Pyramid. 

“May! My dear old friend!” cried Dot, running up to 
25 meet her. “What a happiness to see you !” 

Her old friend was, to the full, as hearty and as glad as 
she; and it really was, if you’ll believe me, quite a pleasant 
sight to see them embrace. Tackleton was a man of taste 
beyond all question. May was very pretty. 

30 You know sometimes, when you are used to a pretty face, 
how, when it comes into contact and comparison with an- 
other pretty face, it seems for the moment to be homely 
and faded, and hardly to deserve the high opinion you have 
had of it. Now, this was not at all the case, either with Dot 
.5 or May; for May’s face set off Dot’s, and Dot’s face set off 
May’s, so naturally and agreeably, that, as John Peery- 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


243 


bingie was very near saying when he came into tiie room, 
they ought to have been born sisters — which was the only 
improvement you could have suggested. 

Tackleton had brought his leg of mutton, and, wonder- 
ful to relate, a tart besides — but we don’t mind a little dissi- 5 
])ation when our brides are in the case; we don’t get mar- 
ried every day — and in addition to these dainties, there were 
the Veal and Ham-Pie, and “things,” as Mrs. Peerybingle 
called them; which were chiefly nuts and oranges, and 
cakes, and such small deer. When the repast was set 10 
forth on the board, flanked by Caleb’s contribution, which 
was a great 'wooden bowl of smoking potatoes (he was pro- 
hibited, by solemn compact, from producing any other 
viands), Tackleton led his intended mother-in-law to the 
Post of Honour. For the better gracing of this place at the 15 
high Festival, the majestic old Soul had adorned herself 
with a cap, calculated to inspire the thoughtless with senti- 
ments of awe. She also wore her gloves. But let us b(‘ 
genteel, or die! 

Caleb sat next his daughter ; Dot and her old schoolfellow 31) 
were side by side ; the good Carrier took care of the bottom 
of the table. Miss Slowboy was isolated, for the time being 
from every article of furniture but the chair she sat on, that 
she might have nothing else to knock the Baby’s head 
against. * 2b 

As Tilly stared about her at the dolls and toys, they stared 
at her and at the company. The venerable old gentlemen 
at the street doors (who were all in full action) showed 
especial interest in the party; pausing occasionally before 
leaping, as if they were listening to the conversation: and :w 
then plunging wildly over and over, a great many times, 
without halting for breath, — as in a frantic state of delight 
with the whole proceedings. 

Certainly, if these old gentlemen were inclined to have a 
fiendi.sh joy, in the contemplation of Tackleton’s discom- 35 
fiture, they had good reason to be satisfied. Tackleton 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


couldn’t get on at all; and the more cheerful his intended 
bride became in Dot’s society, the less he liked it, though he 
had brought them together for that purpose. For he was a 
regular Dog in the ]\langer, w^as Tackleton; and when they 
laughed, and he couldn’t, he took it into his head, immedi- 
ately, that they must be laughing at him. 

“Ah, Alay!” said Dot. “Dear dear, what changes! To 
talk of those merry school-days makes one young again.” 

“Why, you an’t particularly old, at any time, are you?” 
said Tackleton. 

“Look at my sober plodding husband there,” returned 
Dot. “He adds twenty years to my age at least. Don’t 
you, John ?” 

“Forty,” John replied. 

“How many ^m^’ll add to May’s, I’m sure I don’t 
know,” said Dot, laughing. “But she can’t be much less 
than a hundred years of age on her next birthday.” 

“Ha ha!” laughed Tackleton. Hollow as a drum, that 
laugh though. And he looked as if he could have twisted 
Dot’s neck comfortably. 

“Dear dear!” said Dot. “Only to remember how we 
used to talk, at school, about the husbands we would choose 
I don’t know how young, and how handsome, and how 
gay, and how lively, mine was not to be! And as to Alay’s 
— ! Ah, dear! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, 
when I think what silly girls we were.” 

May seemed to know which to do; for the colour flashed 
into her face, and tears stood in her eyes. 

“Even the very persons themselves — real live young men 
— were fixed on sometimes,” said Dot. “ We little thought 
how things would come about. I never fixed on John I’m 
sure; I never so much as thought of him. And if I had 
told you, you were ever to be married to Air. Tackleton, 
why, you’d have slapped me. Wouldn’t you. May ?” 

Though Alay didn’t say yes, she certainly didn’t say no, 
or express no, by any means. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HP:ARTH 


245 


Tackleton laughed — quite shouted, he laughed so loud. 
John Peerybingle laughed too, in his ordinary good-natured 
and contented manner; but his was a mere whisper of a 
laugh to Tackleton’ s. 

“You couldn’t help yourselves, for all that. You could- 
n’t resist us, you see,” said Tackleton. “Here we are! 
Here we are! Where are your gay young bridegrooms 
now!” 

“Some of them are dead,” said Dot; “and some of them 
forgotten. Some of them*, if they could stand among us at 
this moment, would not believe we were the same creatures ; 
would not believe that what they saw and heard was real, 
and we could forget them so. No! they would not believe 
one word of it!” 

“Why, Dot!” exclaimed the Carrier. “Little woman!” 

She had spoken with such earnestness and fire, that she 
stood in need of some recalling to herself, without doubt. 
Her husband’s check w'as very gentle, for he merely inter- 
fered, as he supposed, to shield old Tackleton; but it 
proved effectual, for she stopped, and said no more. There 
was an uncommon agitation, even in her silence, which the 
wary Tackleton, who had brought his half-shut eye to bear 
upon her, noted closely; and remembered to some purpose 
too, as you will see. 

May uttered no word, good or bad, but sat cjuite still, 
with her eyes cast down; and made no sign of interest in 
what had passed. The good lady her mother now inter- 
posed: observing, in the first instance, that girls were girls, 
and bygones bygones, and that so long as young people 
were young and thoughtless, they would probably con- 
duct themselves like young and thoughtless persons: 
with two or three other positions of a no less sound and 
incontrovertible character. She then remarked, in a de- 
vout spirit, that she thanked Heaven she had always found 
in her daughter May, a dutiful and obedient child; for 
which she took no credit to herself, though she had every 


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THE CRICKET OX THE HEARTH 


reason to believe it was entirely owing to herself. With re- 
gard to Mr. Tackleton she said, That he was in a moral 
point of view an undeniable individual; and That he was 
in an eligible point of view a son-in-law to be desired, no 
5 one in their senses could doubt. (She was very empliatic 
here.) With regard to the family into which he was so soon 
about, after some solicitation, to be admitted, she be- 
lieved Mr. Tackleton knew that, although reduced in 
purse, it had some pretensions to gentility; and if certain 
10 circumstances, not wholly unconnected, she would go so 
far as to say, with the Indigo Trade, but to which she 
would not more particularly refer, had happened different- 
ly, it might perhaps have been in possession of Wealth. 
She then remarked that she would not allude to the past, 
15 and would not mention that her daughter had for some 
time rejected the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and that she would 
not say a great many other things which she did say, at 
great length. Finally, she delivered it as the general result 
of her observation and experience, that those marriages in 
20 wdiich there w’as least of w 4 iat w^as romantically and sillily 
called love, w^ere abvays the happiest; and that she antici- 
pated the greatest possible amount of bliss — not rapturous 
bliss; but the solid, steady-going article — froni the ap- 
proaching nuptials. She concluded by informing the com- 
25 pany that to-morrow w^as the day she had lived for, ex- 
pressly; and that wdien it w^as over, she w-ould desire noth- 
ing better than to be packed up and disposed of, in any 
genteel place of burial. 

As these remarks w'ere quite unanswerable; wdiich is the 
happy property of all remarks that are sufficiently wide of 
the purpose: they changed the current of the conversation, 
and diverted the general attention to the Veal and Ham- 
Pie, the cold mutton, the potatoes, and the tart. In order 
that the bottled beer might not be slighted, John Peery- 
a5 bingle proposed To-morrow*; the Wedding-Day; and called 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 247 

upon them to drink a bumper to it, before he proceeded on 
his journey. 

For you ought to know that he only rested there, and 
gave the old horse a bait. He had to go some four or five 
miles farther on; and when he returned in the evening, he 
called for Dot, and took another rest on his way home. 
This was the order of the day on all the Pic-Nic occasions, 
and had been, ever since their institution. 

Thej’e were two persons present, beside the bride and 
bridegroom elect, who did but indifferent honour to the 
toast. One of these was Dot, too flushed and discom- 
posed to adapt herself to any small occurrence of the 
moment; the other, Bertha, who rose up hurriedly, before 
the rest, and left the table. 

“Goodbye!” said smut John Peerybingle, pulling on his 
dreadnought coat. “I shall be back at the old time. Good 
bye all!” 

“Good bye, John,” returned Caleb. 

He seemed to say it by rote, and to wave his hand in the 
same unconscious manner; for he stood observing Bertha 
with an anxious wondering face, that never altered its 
expression. 

“Good bye, young shaver!” said the jolly Carrier, bend- 
ing down to kiss the child; which Tilly Slowboy, now intent 
upon her knife and fork, had deposited asleep (and strange 
to say, without damage) in a little cot of Bertha’s furnish- 
ing; “good bye! Time will come, I suppose, when ycm’W 
turn out into the cold, my little friend, and leave your old 
father to enjoy his pipe and his rheumatics in the chimney- 
corner; eh ? Where’s Dot ?” 

“Pm here, John !” she said, starting. 

“Come, come!” returned the Carrier, clapping his sound- 
ing hands. “Where’s the pipe ?” 

“I quite forgot the pipe, John.” 

Forgot the pipe! Was such a wonder ever heard of! 
She ! Forgot the pipe ! 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


“1 11 — ril fill it directly. It’s soon done.” 

But it was not so soon done, either. It lay in the usual 
place; the Carrier’s dreadnought pocket; with the little 
pouch, her own work, from which she was used to fill it; but 
5 her hand shook so, that she entangled it (and yet her hand 
was small enough to have come out easily, I am sure), and 
bungled terribly. The filling of the pipe and lighting it, 
those little offices in Avhich I have commended her discre- 
tion, if you recollect; were vilely done, from first to last. 
10 During the whole process, Tackleton stood looking on 
maliciously with the half-closed eye; which, whenever it 
met hers — or caught it, for it can hardly be said to have 
ever met another eye: rather being a kind of trap to 
snatch it up — augmented her confusion in a most remark- 
15 able degree. 

“Why, what a clumsy Dot you are, this afternoon!” 
said John. ‘T could have done it better myself, I verily 
believe!” 

With these good-natured words, he strode away; and 
20 presently was heard, in company with Boxer, and the old 
horse, and the cart, making lively music down the road. 
What time the dreamy Caleb still stood, watching his 
Blind Daughter, with the same expression on his face. 

“Bertha!” said Caleb softly. “What has happened? 
25 How changed you are, my darling, in a few hours — since 
this morning. You silent and dull all day! What is it? 
Tell me!” 

“Oh father, father!” cried the Blind Girl, bursting into 
tears. “Oh my hard, hard fate !” 

30 Caleb drew his hand across his eyes before he answered 
her. 

“But think how cheerful and how happy you have been, 
Bertha! How good, and how much loved, by rnanv peo- 
ple.” 

“That strikes me to the heart, dear father! Always so 
mindful of me ! Always so kind to me !” 


35 


THE CRICKET ,0N THE HEARTH 


249 


Caleb was very much perplexed to understand her. 

“To be— to be blind, Bertha, my poor dear, ’ he faltered, 

“ is a great affliction ; but ’ ’ 

“I have never felt it!” cried the Blind Girl. “1 have 
I never felt it, in its fulness. Never! I have sometimes 5 

, wished that I could see you, or could see him ; only once, 

dear father; only for one little minute; that I might know 
I what it is I treasure up,” she laid her hands upon her 
I breast, “and hold here! That I might be sure I have it 

■ right! And sometimes (but then I was a child) I have kj 

' wept, in my prayers at night, to think that when your 
images ascended from my heart to Heaven, they might not 
i be the true resemblance of yourselves. But I have never 
I had these feelings long. They have passed away and left 
! me tranquil and contented.” i5 

; “And they will again,” said Caleb. 

; “But father! Oh my good gentle father, bear with me, 

• if I am wicked!” said the Blind Girl. “This is not the sor- 
: row that so weighs me down !” 

Her father could not choose but let his moist eyes over- 20 
flow; she was so earnest and pathetic. But he did not 
' understand her, yet. 

“Bring her to me,” said Bertha. “I cannot hold it 
closed and shut within myself. Bring her to me, father!” 
She knew^ he hesitated, and said, “May. Bring May!” 25 
May heard the mention of her name, and coming quietly 
towards her, touched her on the arm. The Blind Girl 
turned immediately, and held her by both hands. 

“Look into my face. Dear heart, Sweet heart!” said 
Bertha. “Read it with your beautiful eyes, and tell me if so 
' the Truth is written on it.” 

“Dear Bertha, Yes!” 

- The Blind Girl still, upturning the blank sightless face, 
down which the tears were coursing fast, addressed her in 
these words: 35 

“There is not, in my Soul, a wish or thought that is not 


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THE CTiICKET OX <THE HEARTH 


for your good, bright May! There is not, in my Soul, a 
grateful recollection stronger than the deep remembrance 
which is stored there, of the many many times when, in 
the full pride of Sight and Beauty, you have had considera- 
tion for Blind Bertha, even when we two were children, or 
vvTen Bertha was as much a child as ever blindness can be! 
Every blessing on your head! Light upon your happy 
course! Not the less, my dear May;” and she drew to- 
wards her, in a closer grasp; “not the less, my bird, 
because, to-day, the knowledge that you are to be His wife 
has wrung my heart almost to breaking! Father, May, 
Mary! oh forgive me that it is so, for the sake of all he has 
done to relieve the-weariness of my dark life : and for the 
sake of the belief you have in me, when I call Heaven to 
\\dtness that I could not wish him married to a wife more 
worthy of his Goodness !” 

While speaking, she had released IMay Fielding’s hands, 
and clasped her garments in an attitude of mingled supplica- 
tion and love. Sinking lower and lower down, as she pro- 
ceeded in her strange confession, she droj)ped at last at 
the feet of her friend, and hid her blind face in the folds of 
her dress. 

“Great Power!” exclaimed her father, smitten at one 
blow with the truth, “have I deceived her from the cradle, 
but to break her heart at last !” 

It was well for all of them that Dot, that beaming, useful, 
busy little Dot — for such she was, whatever faults she had, 
and however you may learn to hate her, in good time — it 
was well for all of them, I say, that she was there; or where 
this would have ended, it were hard to tell. But Dot, re- 
covering her self-possession, interposed, before IMay could 
reply, or Caleb say another word. 

“Come come, dear Bertha! come away with me! Give 
her your arm. May. So! How composed she is, you see, 
already; and how good it is of her to mind us,” said the 
cheery little woman, kissing her upon the forehead. “Come 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


251 


away, dear Bertha ! Come ! and here’s her good father will 
come with her ; won’ t you Caleb ? To — be — sure 1’^ 

\\ell, well! she was a noble little Dot in such things, and 
it must have been an obdurate nature that could have with- 
stood her influence. When she had got poor Caleb and 
his Bertha away, that they might comfort and console each 
other, as she knew they only could, she presently came 
bouncing back — the saying is, as fresh as any daisy; I say 
fresher — to mount guard over that bridling little piece of 
consequence in the cap and gloves, and prevent the dear 
old creature from making discoveries. 

“So bring me the precious Baby, Tilly,” said she, draw- 
ing a chair to the fire; “and while I have it in my lap, here’s 
?^Irs. Fielding, Tilly, will tell me all about the management 
of Babies, and put me right in twenty points where Fin as 
wrong as can be. Won’t you, Mrs. Fielding ?” 

Not even the Welsh Giant, who according to the popular 
expression, was so “slow” as to perform a fatal surgical 
operation upon himself, in emulation of a juggling- trick 
achieved by his arch-enemy at breakfast-time ; not even he 
fell half so readily into the Snare prepared for him, as the 
old lady did into this artful Pitfall. The fact of Tackleton 
having walked out; and furthermore, of two or three people 
having been talking together at a distance, for two minutes, 
leaving her to her own resources ; was quite enough to have 
put her on her dignity, and the bewailment of that mys- 
terious convulsion in the Indigo Trade, for four-and- twenty 
hours. But this becoming deference to her experience, on 
the part of the young mother, was so irresistible, that after 
a short affectation of humility, she began to enlighten her 
with the best grace in the world ; and sitting bolt upright 
before the wicked Dot, she did, in half an hour, deliver 
more infallible domestic recipes and precepts, than would 
(if acted on) have utterly destroyed and done up that 
Young Peerybingle, though he had been an Infant Samson. 

To change the theme. Dot did a little needlework — she 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


carried the contents of a whole work box in her pocket; 
liowever she contrived it, / don’t know — then did a little 
nursing; then a little more needlework; then had a 
little whispering chat with May, while the old lady dozed 
5 and so in little bits of bustle, which was quite her manner 
always, found it a very short afternoon. Then as it grew 
dark, and as it was a solemn part of this Institution of the 
Pic-Nic that she should perform all Bertha’s household 
tasks, she trimmed the fire, and swept the hearth, and set 
10 the tea-board out, and drew the curtain, and lighted a can- 
dle. Then, she played an air or two on a rude kind of harj), 
which Caleb had contrived for Bertha; and played them 
very well; for Nature had made her delicate little ear as 
choice a one for music as it would have been for jewels, 
15 if she had had any to wear. By this time it was the estab- 
lished hour for having tea; and Tackleton came back 
again, to share the meal, and spend the evening. 

Caleb and Bertha had returned some time before, and 
Caleb had sat down to his afternoon’s work. But he 
20 couldn’t settle to it, poor fellow, being anxious and re- 
morseful for his daughter. It was touching to see him 
sitting idle on his working-stool, regarding her so wistfully ; 
and always saying in his face, “Have I deceived her from 
her cradle, but to break her heart!” 

25 When it was night, and tea vras done, and Dot had noth- 
ing more to do in washing up the cups and saucers; in a 
word — for 1 must come to it, and there is no use in putting 
it off — when the time drew nigh for expecting the Car- 
rier’s return in every sound of distant wheels; her manner 
20 changed again; her colour came and went; and she was 
very restless. Not as good wives are, when listening for 
their husbands. No, no, no. It was another sort of rest- 
lessness from that. 

Wheels heard. A horse’s feet. The barking of a dog. 
35 The gradual approach of all the sounds. The scratching 
paw of Boxer at the door! 


THE CRICKET QN THE HEARTH 


253 


“Whose step is that!” cried Bertha, starting up. 

“Whose step?” returned the Carrier, standing in the 
portal, with his brown face ruddy as a winter berry from 
the keen night air. “Why, mine.” 

“The other step,” said Bertha. “The man’s tread be- 
hind you !” 

“She is not tabe deceived,” observed the Carrier, laugh- 
ing. “Come along. Sir. You’ll be welcome, never fear!” 

He spoke in a loud tone; and as he spoke, the deaf old 
gentleman entered. 

“He’s not so much a stranger, that you haven’t seen him 
once, Caleb,” said the Carrier. “You’ll give him house- 
room till we go ?” 

“Oh, surely, John; and take it as an honour.” 

“He’s the best company on earth, to talk secrets in,” 
said John. “I have reasonable good lungs, but he tries 
’em, I can tell you. Sit down. Sir. All friends here, and 
glad to see you!” 

AVhen he had imparted this assurance, in a voice that 
amply corroborated what he had said about his lungs, he 
added in his natural tone, “A chair in the chimney-corner, 
and leave to sit quite silent and look pleasantly about him, 
is all he cares for. He’s easily pleased.” 

Bertha had been listening intently. She»called Caleb to 
her side, when he had set the chair, and asked him, in a 
low voice, to describe their visitor. When he had done so 
(truly now; with scrupulous fidelity), she moved, for the 
first time since he had come in ; and sighed ; and seemed to 
have no further interest concerning him. 

The Carrier was in high spirits, good fellow that he was ; 
and fonder of his little, wife than ever. 

“A clumsy Dot sh^ was, this afternoon!” he said, encir- 
cling her with his rough arm, as she stood, removed from 
the rest; “and yet, I like her somehow. See yonder. Dot!” 

He pointed to the old man. She looked down. I think 
she trembled. 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


“He’s — ha ha ha! — he’s full of admiration for you!” said 
the Carrier. “Talked of nothing else, the whole way here. 
Why, he’s a brave old boy. 1 like him for it 1” 

“I wish he had had a better subject, John;” she said, with 
an uneasy glance about the room; at Tackleton especially. 

“ A better subject!” cried the jovial John. “There’s no 
such thing. Come! off with the great-coat, off with the 
tliick shawl, off with the heavy wrappers I and a cosy half- 
hour by the fire! My humble service. Mistress. A game 
at cribbage, you and I ? That’s hearty. The cards and 
board. Dot. And a glass of beer here, if there’s any left, 
small wife 1” 

His challenge Vv’as addressed to the old lady, who accept- 
ing it with gracious readiness, they were soon engaged upon 
the game. At first, the Carrier looked about him some- 
times, with a smile, or now and then called Dot to peep over 
his shoulder at his hand, and advise him on some knotty 
point. But his adversary being a rigid disciplinarian, and 
subject to an occasional weakness in respect to pegging 
more than she was entitled to, required such vigilance on 
his part, as left him neither eyes nor ears to spare. Thus, 
his whole attention gradually became absorbed upon the 
cards; and he thought of nothing else, until a hand upon 
his shoulder restored him to a consciousness of Tackleton. 

“I am sorry to disturb you — but a word, directly.” 

“I’m going to deal,” returned the Carrier. “It’s a 
crisis.” 

“It is,” said Tackleton. “Come here, man!” 

There was that in his pale face which made the other rise 
immediately, and ask him, in a hurry, what the matter was. 

“Hush! John Peerybingle,” said Tackleton. “I am 
sorry for this. I am indeed. I have been afraid of it. I 
have suspected it from the first.” 

“What is it?” asked the Carrier, with a frightened aspect. 

“Hush! I’ll show you, if you’ll come with me.” 

The Carrier accompanied him, without another word. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


255 


Tbc'v went across a yard, where the stars were shining; 
and by a little side door, into Tackleton’s own counting- 
house, w'here there was a glass window, commanding the 
ware-room: which was closed for the night. There was no 
light in the counting-house itself, but there were lamps in o 
the long narrow ware-room ; and consequently the window 
was bright. 

“A moment!” said Tackleton. “Can you bear to look 
through that window, do you think ?” 

“Why not ?” returned the Carrier. la 

“A moment more,” said Tackleton. “Don*t commit 
any violence. It's of no use. It’s dangerous too. You’re 
a strong-made man; and you might do Murder before 
you know it.” 

The Carrier looked him in the face, and recoiled a step as 
if he had been struck. In one stride he was at the window, 
and he saw — 

Oh Shadow on the Hearth! Oh truthful Cricket I Oh 
perfidious Wife ! 

He saw her, with the old man; old no longer, but erect 20 
and gallant; bearing in his hand the false white hair that 
had won his way into their desolate and miserable home. 

He saw her listening to him, as he bent his head to whist)er 
in her ear; and suffering him to clasp her round the waist, 
as they move slowly down the dim wooden gallery towards 25. 
the door by which they had entered it. He saw them stop, 
and saw her turn — to have the face, the face he love<l 
so, so presented to his view! — and saw her, with her own 
hands, adjust the Lie upon his head, laughing, as she did it, 
at his unsuspicious nature ! m 

He clenched his strong right hand at first, as if it would 
have beaten down a lion. But opening it immediately 
again, he spread it out before the eyes of Tackleton (for he 
was tender of her, even then), and so, as they passed out, 
fell down upon a desk, and was as weak as any infant, 35 

He was wrapped up to the chin, and busy with his horse 


256 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


and parcels, when she came into the room, prepared for 
going home. 

“Now John dear! Good night. May! Good night, 
Bertha!” 

5 Could she kiss them ? Could she be blithe and cheerful 
in her parting? Could she venture to reveal her face to 
them without a blush? Yes. Tackleton observed her 
closely; and she did all this. 

Tilly was hushing the baby; and she crossed and re- 
10 crossed Tackleton, a dozen times, repeating drowsily: — 

“Did the knowledge that it was to be its wifes, then, 
wring its hearts almost to breaking; and did its fathers de- 
ceive It from its cradles but to break its hearts at last !” 

“Now Tilly, give me the Baby. Good night, Mr. Tack- 
1,5 leton. Where’s John, for Goodness’ sake?” 

“He’s going to walk, beside the horse’s head,” said 
'^I'ackleton ; who helped her to her seat. 

“My dear John. Walk ? To-night ?” 

The muffled figure of her husband made a hasty sign in 
20 the affirmative; and the false stranger and the little nurse 
being in their places, the old horse moved off. Boxer , the 
unconscious Boxer, running on before, running back, run- 
ning round and round the cart, and barking as trium- 
phantly and merrily as ever. 

35 When Tackleton had gone off likewise, escorting May 
and her mother home, poor Caleb sat down by the fire be- 
side his daughter; anxious and remorseful at the core; and 
still saying in his wistful contemplation of her, “Have I de- 
ceived her from her cradle, but to break her heart at last!” 
30 The toys that had been set in motion for the Baby, had all 
stopped and run down, long ago. In the faint light and 
silence, the imperturbably calm dolls; the agitated rocking- 
horses with distended eyes and nostrils; the old gentlemen 
at the street doors, standing, half doubled up, upon their 
35 failing knees and ankles; the wry-faced nut-crackers; the 
very Beasts upon their way into the Ark, in twos, like a 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 257 

Boarding-School out walking; might have been imagined 
to be stricken motionless with fantastic wonder, at Dot 
being false, or Tackleton beloved, under any combination 
of circumstances. 


CHIRP THE THIRD 


The Dutch clock in the corner struck Ten, when the 
Carrier sat down by his fireside, So troubled and grief- worn, 
that he seemed to scare the Cuckoo, wTo, having cut his 
ten melodious announcements as short as possible, U 
5 plunged back into the Moorish Palace again, and clapped 
his little door behind him, as if the unwonted spectacle 
were too much for his feelings. 

If the little Haymaker had been armed with the sharpest 
of scythes, and had cut at every stroke into the Carrier’s 
10 heart, he never could have gashed and wounded it, as Dot 
had done. 

It was a heart so full of love for her; so bound up and held 
together by innumerable threads of winning remembrance, 
spun from the daily working of her many qualities of en- ' 
15 dearment; it was a heart in which she had enshrined herself 
so gently and so closely ; a heart so single and so earnest in 
its Truth; so strong in right, so weak in wrong: that it could 
cherish neither passion nor revenge at first, and had only 
room to hold the broken image of its Idol. 

20 But slowly, slowly; as the Carrier sat brooding on his 
hearth, now cold and dark ; other and fiercer thoughts began 
to rise within him, as an angry wind comes rising in the 
night. The Stranger was beneath his outraged roof. 
Three steps would take him to his chamber-door. One 
25 blow would beat it in. “You might do Murder before you 
know it,” Tackleton had said. How could it be Murder, 
if he gave the Villain time to grapple with him hand to hand ! 
He was the younger man. 

It was an ill-timed thought, bad for the dark mood of his 
30 mind. It was an angry thought, goading him to some 

258 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


259 


avenging act, that should change the cheerful house into a 
haunted place which lonely travellers would dread to pass 
by night; and where the timid would see shadows strug- 
gling in the ruined Avindows when the moon was dim, and 
hear wild noises in the stormy weather. 

He was the younger man! Yes, yes; some lover who 
had won the heart that he had never touched. Some lover 
of her early choice : of whom she had thought and dreamed : 
for Avhom she had pined and pined: when he had fancied 
her so happy by his side. Oh agony to think of it! 

She had been above stairs Avith the Baby, getting it to 
bed. As he sat brooding on the hearth, she came close 
beside him, AAuthout his knowledge — in the turning of the 
rack of his great misery, he lost all other sounds — and put 
her little stool at his feet. He only kncAv it, when he felt 
her hand upon his own, and saAv her looking up into his 
face. 

With wonder? No. It Avas his first impression, and he 
Avas fain to look at her again, to set it right. No, not VAUth 
Avonder. With an eager and inquiring look; but not with 
AA'onder. At first it was alarmed and serious; then it 
changed into a strange, wild, dreadful smile of recognition 
of his thoughts; then there was nothing but her clasped 
hands on her broAV, and her bent head, and falling hair. 

Though the power of Omnipotence had been his to wield 
at that moment, he had too much of its Diviner property of 
Mercy in his breast, to have turned one feather’s weight of 
it against her. But he could not bear to see her crouching 
doAvn upon the little seat where he had often looked on her, 
Avith love and pride, so innocent and gay; and when she 
rose and left him, sobbing as she went, he felt it a relief to 
have the vacant place beside him rather than her so long 
cherished presence. This in itself Avas anguish keener than 
all : reminding him how desolate he was become, and how 
the great bond of his life A\^as rent asunder. 

The more he felt this, and the more he knew he could have 


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260 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


better borne to see her lying prematurely dead before him | 
with their little child upon her breast, the higher and the 
stronger rose his wrath against his enemy. He looked 
about him for a weapon. 

5 There was a Gun, hanging on the wall. He took it down, 
and moved a pace or two tow^ards the door of the perfid- 
ious Stranger s room. He knew the Gun was loaded. 
Some shadowy idea that it was just to shoot this man like a 
Wild Beast, seized him, and dilated in his mind until it 
10 grew into a monstrous demon in complete possession of 
him, casting out all milder thoughts and setting up its undi- 
vided empire. 

That phrase is wrong. Not casting out his milder 
thoughts, but artfully transforming them. Changing them 
15 into scourges to drive him on. Turning water into blood. 
Love into hate. Gentleness into blind ferocity. Her image, 
sorrowing, humbled, but still pleading to his tenderness 
and mercy with resistless powder, never left his mind; but 
staying there, it urged him to the door; raised the weapon 
20 to his shoulder; fitted and nerved his finger to the trigger; | 
and cried “Kill him ! In his bed !” ! 

He reversed the Gun to beat the stock upon the door; he 
already held it lifted in the air; some indistinct design was 
in his thoughts of calling out to him to fly, for God’s sake 
25 bythewdndow — 

When, suddenly, the struggling fire illumined the whole 
chimney with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the 
Hearth began to chirp ! 

No sound he could have heard; no human voice, not 
30 even hers; could so have moved and softened him. The 
artless words in which she had told him of her love for this 
same Cricket, were once more freshly spoken; her tremb- 
ling, earnest manner at the moment, was again before him ; 
her pleasant voice — Oh what a voice it was, for making 
35 household music at the fireside of an honest man! — 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 2^31 

thrilled through and through his better nature, and awoke 
it into life and action. 

He recoiled from the door, like a man walking in his 
sleep, awakened from a frightful dream; and put the Gun 
aside. Clasping his hands before his face, he then sat 
down again beside the fire, and found relief in tears. 

The Cricket on the Hearth came out into the room, and 
stood in Fairy shape before him. 

“ ‘I love it,’ ” said the Fairy Voice, repeating what he 
well remembered, “ ‘for the many times I have heard it, 
and the many thoughts its harmless music has given me.’ ” 

“She said so !” cried the Carrier. “True !” 

‘This has been a happy Home, John; and I love the 
Cricket for its sake'.’ ” 

“It has been. Heaven knows,” returned the Carrier. 
“She made it happy, always, — until now.” 

“So gracefully sweet-tempered ; so domestic, joyful, busy, 
and light-hearted !” said the Voice. 

“Otherwise I never could have loved her as I did,” re- 
turned the Carrier. 

The Voice, correcting him, said “do.” 

The Carrier repeated “as I did.” But not firmly. His 
faltering tongue resisted his control, and would speak in its 
own way, for itself and him. 

The Figure, in an attitude of invocation, raised its hand 
and said: 

“Upon your own hearth ” 

“The hearth she has blighted,” interposed the Carrier. 

“The hearth she has — how often! — blessed and bright- 
ened,” said the Cricket: “the hearth which, but for her, 
were only a few stones and bricks and rusty bars, but which 
has been, through her, the Altar of your Home; on which 
you have nightly sacrificed some petty passion, selfishness, 
or care, and offered up the homage of a tranquil mind, a 
trusting nature, and an overflowing heart ; so that the smoke 
from this poor chimney has gone upward with a better 


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262 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


fragrance than the richest incense that is burnt before the 
richest shrines in all the gaudy Temples of this World! — 
Upon your own hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded 
by its gentle influences and associations; hear her! 

5 Hear me! Hear everything that speaks the language of 
your hearth and home!” 

“And pleads for her ?” inquired the Carrier. 

“All things that speak the language of your hearth and 
home, must plead for her!” returned the Cricket. For 
10 they speak the Truth . ” 

And while the Carrier, with his head upon his hands, 
continued to sit meditating in his chair, the Presence stood 
beside him; suggesting his reflections by its power, and pre- 
senting them before him, as in a Glass or Picture. It was 
15 not a solitary Presence. From the hearth-stone, from the 
chimney; from the clock, the pipe, the kettle, and the 
cradle; from the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and the stairs; 
from the cart without, and the cupboard within, and the 
household implements; from every thing and every place 
20 with which she had ever been familiar, and with which she 
had ever entwined one recollection of herself in her unhappy 
husband’s mind; Fairies came trooping forth. Not to 
Stand beside him as the Cricket did, but to busy and bestir 
themselves. To do all honour to Her image. To pull 
25 him by the skirts, and point to it when it appeared. To 
cluster round it, and embrace it, and strew flowers for it to 
tread on. To try to crown its fair head with their tiny 
hands. To show that they were fond of it and loved it; 
and that there was not one ugly, wicked, or accusatory 
30 creature to claim knowledge of it — none but their pla^dul 
and approving selves. 

His thoughts were constant to her image. It was always 
there. 

She sat plying her needle, before the fire, and singing to 
.35 herself. Such a blithe, thriving, steady little Dot! The 
fairy figures turned upon him all at once, by one consent^ 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


203 


with one prodigious concentrated stare; and seemed to 
say “Is this the light wife yon are mourning for!” 

d'liere were sounds of gaiety outside; musical instru- 
ments, and noisy tongues, and laughter. A crowd of 
youug merry-makers came ])ouring in; among whom were 5 
]\Iay Fielding and a score of ])retty girls. Dot was the 
fain'st of them all; as youug as any of them too. They 
cair.e to summon her to join their ])arty. It was a dance. 

If ever little foot were made for dancing, hers was, surely. 
Hut she laughed and shook her head, and ])ointed to her 10 
cookery on the fire, and her table ready s])read: v.ith an 
exulting defiance that rendert'd her more charming than 
she was before. And so she merrily dismissed them: nod- 
ding to her would-be partners, one by one, as they ])assed 
out, with a comical indifference, enough to make them go 15 
and drown themselves Immediately if they were her ad- 
mirers — and they must have been so, more or less; they 
couldn’t help it. And yet indifference was not her charac- 
ter. Oh no! For presently, there came a certain Oarrier 
to the door; and bless her, what a welcome she bestowed 20 
upon him ! 

Again the staring figures turned u})on him all at once, 
and seemed to say “Is this the wife who has forsaken you!” 

A shadow fell u])on the mirror or the ])icture: call it what 
you will. A great shadow of the Stranger, as he first stood 25 
underneath their roof; covering its surface, and blotting 
out all other objects. Hut the niml)le Fairies worked like 
Hees to clear it off again; and Dot again was there. Still 
bright and beautiful. 

Hocking her little Haby in its cradle; singing to it softly; iJO 
and resting her head upon a shoulder which had its counter- 
])art in the musing figure by which the Fairy Cricket stood. 

d’he night — I mean the real night; not going by Fairy 
clocks — was wearing now; and in this stage of the Carrier s 
llioughts, the moon burst out, and shone brightly in the sky. 35 
Perhaps some calm and cjuiet light had risen also, in his 


264 


• THE CRICKET OX THE HEARTH 


mind; and he could think more soberly of what had hap- 
])ened. 

Although the shadow of the Stranger fell at intervals 
upon the glass — always distinct, and big, and thoroughly 
5 defined — it never fell so darkly as at first. Whenever it 
appeared, the Fairies uttered a general cry of consternation, 
and plied their little arms and legs, with inconceivable 
activity, to rub it out. And whenever they got at Dot 
again, and showed her to him once more, bright and beauti- 
10 fill, they cheered in the most inspiring manner. 

They never showed her, otherwise than beautiful and 
bright, for they were Household Spirits to whom Falsehood 
is annihilation; and being so, what Dot was there for them, 
but the one active, beaming, pleasant little creature who 
15 had been the light and sun of the Carrier’s Home ! 

The Fairies were prodigiously excited when they 
showed her, with the Baby, gossiping among a knot of 
sage old matrons, and affecting to be wondrous old and 
matronly herself, and leaning in a staid, demure old way 
20 upon her husband’s arm, attempting — she! such a bud of a 
little woman — to convey the idea of having abjured the 
vanities of the world in general, and of being the sort of 
person to whom it was no novelty at all to be a mother; yet 
in the same breath, they showed her, laughing at the Car- 
2.5 rier for being awkward, and pulling up his shirt-collar to 
make him smart, and mincing merrily about that very room 
to teach him how to dance. 

They turned, and stared immensely at him when they 
showed her with the Blind Girl ; for though she carried cheer- 
30 fulness and animation with her, wheresoever she went, she 
bore those influences into Caleb Plummer’s home, heaped 
up and running over. The Blind Girl’s love for her, and 
trust in her, and gratitude to her; her own good busy way 
of setting Bertha’s thanks aside; her dexterous little arts for 
35 filling up each moment of the visit in doing something usC' 
ful to the house, and really working liard while feigning to 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 265 

make holiday; her bountiful provision of those standing 
delicacies, the Veal and Ham-Pie and the bottles of Beer; 
her radiant little face arriving at the door, and taking leave; 
the wonderful expression in her whole self, from her neat 
foot to the crowm of her head, of being a jiart of tin* estab- 
lishment — a something necessary to it, which it couldn’t 
be without; all this the Fairies revelled in, and loved her 
for. And once again they looked u})on him all at once,, 
appealingly; and seemed to say, while some among them 
nestled in her dress and fondled her, “Is this the Wife who 
has betrayed your confidence!” 

More than once or twice, or thrice, in the long thoughtful 
night, they showed her to him sitting on her favorite, seat, 
with her bent head, her hands clas})ed on her brow, her 
falling hair. As he had seen her last. And when they 
found her thus, they neither turned nor looked upon him, 
but gathered close round her, and comforted and kissed 
her: and pressed on one another to show sympathy and 
kindness to her; and forgot him altogether. 

Thus the night passed. The moon went down; the stars 
grew pale; the cold day broke; the sun rose. The Carrier 
still sat, musing in the chimney corner. He had sat there, 
with his head upon his hands all night. All night the 
faithful Cricket had been Chirp, Chirp, Chirping on the 
Hearth. All night he had listened to its voice. All night, 
the household Fairies had been busy with him. All night, 
she had been amiable and blameless in the Glass, except 
Avhen that one shadow fell upon it. 

He rose up when it was broad day, and washed and 
dressed himself. He couldn’t go about his customary 
cheerful avocations; he wanted spirit for them; but it mat- 
tered the less, that it was Tackleton’s wedding-day, and he 
had arranged to make his rounds by proxy. Fie had 
thought to have gone merrily to church with Dot. But such 
plans were at an end. It was their own wedding-day too. 
Ah ! how little he had looked for such a close to such a year! 


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THE CRICKET OX THE HEARTH 


The Carrier expected that Tackleton would pay him an 
early visit; and he was right. He had not walked to and 
fro before his own door, many minutes, when he saw the 
Toy-merchant coming in his chaise along the road. As 
5 the chaise drew nearer, he perceived that Tackleton was 
dressed out sprucely, for his marriage: and had decorated 
his horse’s head with flowers and favours. 

The horse looked much more like a Bridegroom than 
Tackleton: whose half-closed eye was more disagreeably 
10 expressive than ever. But the Carrier took little heed of 
this. His thoughts had other occupation. 

“John Peerybingle !” said Tackleton, with an air of con- 
dolence. “My good fellow, how do vou find yourself this 
morning ?” 

15 ‘T have had but a poor night, Master Tackleton,” re- 
turned the Carrier; shaking his head: “for I have been a 
good deal disturbed in my mind. But it’s over now! Can 
you spare me half-an-hour or so, for some private talk ?” 

“I came on purpose,” returned Tackleton, alighting. 
20 “Never mind the horse. He’ll stand quiet enough, with 
the reins over this post, if you’ll give him a mouthful of hay.” 

The Carrier having brought it from his stable and set 
it before him, they turned into the house. 

“You are not married before noon?” he said, “1 think?” 
25 “No,” answered Tackleton. “Plenty of time. Plenty 

of time.” 

When they entered the kitchen, Tilly Slowboy was rap- 
ping at the Stranger’s door; which was only removed from 
it by a few steps. One of her very red eyes (for Tilly had 
so been crying all night long, because her mistress cried) was 
at the keyhole; and she was knocking very loud; and 
seemed frightened. 

“If you please I can’t make nobody hear,” said Tilly 
looking round. “I hope nobody an’t gone and been and 
So died if you please!” 

This philanthropic wish. Miss Slowboy emphasized with 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


26T 


various new raps and kicks at the door; which led to no re- 
sult w'hatever. 

“Shall I go ?” said Tackleton. “It’s curious.” 

The Carrier, who had turned his face from the door, 
signed to him to go if he would. 5 

So Tackleton went to Tilly Slowboy’s relief; and he too 
kicked and knocked; and he too failed to get the least re- 
ply. But he thought of trying the handle of the door; and 
as it opened easily, he peeped in, looked in, went in; and 
soon came running out again. lo 

“John Peerybingle,” said Tackleton, in his ear. “I 
hope there has been nothing — nothing rash in the night.” 

The Carrier turned upon him quickly. 

“Because he’s gone!” said Tackleton; “and the window’s 
open. I don’t see any marks — to be sure it’s almost on a is 
level with the garden: but I was afraid there might have 
been some — some scuffle. Eh ?” 

He nearly shut up the expressive eye altogether; he 
looked at him so hard. And he gave his eye, and his face, 
and his whole person, a sharp twist. As if he would have 20 
screwed the truth out of him. 

“Make yourself easy,” said the Carrier. “He went into 
that room last night, without harm in word or deed from 
me; and no one has entered it since. He is awTiy of his 
owm free will. I’d go out gladly at that door, and beg my 25 
bread from house to house, for life, if I could so change the 
past that he had never come. But he has come and gone. 
And I have done wdth him 1 ” 

“Oh! — Well, I think he has got off pretty easy,” said 
Tackleton, taking a chair. 30 

The sneer was lost upon the Carrier, wfflo sat down too: 
and shaded his face with his hand, for some little time, be- 
fore proceeding. 

“You showed me last night,” he said at length, “my 
wife; my wife that I love; secretly ” 

“And tenderly,” insinuated Tackleton. 


35 


2G8 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


"'Conniving at that man’s disguise, and giving him op- 
portunities of meeting her alone. I think there’s no sight 
I wouldn’t have rather seen than that. I think there’s no 
man in the world I wouldn’t have rather had to show it me.” 

5 ‘"I confess to having had my suspicions always,” said 

Tackleton. “And that has made me objectionable here, I 
know.” 

“But as you did show it me,” pursued the Carrier, not 
minding him; “and’ as you saw her; my wife; my wife that 1 
10 love” — ^his voice, and eye, and hand, grew steadier and 
firmer as he repeated these words : evidently in pursuance of 
a steadfast purpose — “as you saw her at this disadvantage, 
it is right and just that you should also see with my eyes, 
and look into my breast, and know what my mind is, upon 
15 the subject. For it’s settled,” said the Carrier, regard- 
ing him attentively. “And nothing can shake it now.” 

Tackleton muttered a few general words of assent, about 
its being necessary to vindicate something or other; but he 
was overawed by the manner of his companion. Plain and 
20 unpolished as it was, it had a something dignified and noble 
in it, which nothing but the soul of generous Honour, 
dwelling in the man, could have imparted. 

“I am a plain, rough man,” pursued the Carrier, “with 
very little to recommend me. I am not a clever man, as 
25 you very well know. I am not a young man. I loved my 
little Dot, because I had seen her grow up, from a child, in 
her father’s house; because I knew how precious she was; 
because she had been my Life, for years and years. There’s 
many men I can’t compare with, who never could have 
so loved my little Dot like me, I think I” 

He paused, and softly beat the ground a short time with 
his foot, before resuming; 

“I often thought that though I wasn’t good enough for 
her, I should make her a kind husband, and perhaps know 
35 her value better than another; and in this way I reconciled 
it to myself, and came to think it might be possible that we 


THE CRICKET OX THE HEARTH 269 

should be married. And in the end it came about, and 
we were married.” 

“Hah!” said Tackleton, with a significant shake of his 
head. 

“I had studied myself; I had had experience of myself; 
I knew how much I loved her, and how happy I should be,” 
pursued the Carrier. ‘'But I had not — I feel it now — 
sufficiently considered her.” 

“To be ^ure,” said Tackleton. “Giddiness, frivolity, 
fickleness, love of admiration! Not considered! All left 
out of sight ! Hah!” 

“You had best not interrupt me,” said the Carrier, with 
some sternness, “till you understand me; and you’re wide 
of doing so. If, yesterday, I’d have struck that man down 
at a blow, who dared to breathe a word against her ; to-day 
I’d set my foot upon his face, if he was my brother!” 

The Toy-merchant gazed at him in astonishment. He 
went on in a softer tone: 

“Did I consider,” said the Carrier, “ that I took her; at 
her age, and with her beauty ; from her young companions, 
and the many scenes of which she v/as the ornament; in 
which she was the brightest little star that evei^ shone; to 
shut her up from day to day in my dull house, and keep my 
tedious company? Did I consider how little suited I was 
to her sprightly humour, and how wearisome a plodding 
man like me must be, to one of her quick spirit; did I con- 
sider that it was no merit in me, or claim in me, that I 
loved her when everybody must, who knew her ? Never. 
I took advantage of her hopeful nature and her cheerful 
disposition; and I married her. I wish I never had! For 
her sake; not for mine!” 

The Toy-merchant gazed at him, without winking. 
Even the half-shut eye was open now. 

“Heaven bless her!” said the Carrier, “for the cheerful 
constancy with which she tried to keep the knowledge of 
this from me! And Heaven help me, that, in my slow 


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THE CRICKET OX THE HEARTH 


mind, I have not found it out loefore! Poor child! Poor 
Dot! I not to find it out, who have seen her eyes fill witli 
tears, when such a marriage as our own was spoken of! I 
who have seen the secret trembling on her lips a hundred 
5 times, and never suspected it, till last night! Poor girl! 
That I could ever hope she would be fond of me ! That I 
could ever believe she was \” 

“She made a show of it,” said Tackleton. “She made 
such a show of it, that to tell you the truth it was the origin 
10 of my misgivings.” 

And here he asserted the superiority of May Fielding, 
who certainly made no sort of show of being fond of him. 

“She has tried,” said the poor Carrier, with greater emo- 
tion than he had exhibited yet; “I only now begin to know 
how hard she has tried; to be my dutiful and zealous wife. 
How good she has been; how much she has done; how 
brave and strong a heart she has; let the happiness I have 
known under this roof bear witness! It will be some help 
and comfort to me when I am here alone.” 

20 “Here alone?” said Tackleton. “Oh! Then you do 
mean to take some notice of this ?” 

“I meap,” returned the Carrier, “to do her the greatest 
kindness, and make her the best reparation, in my power. 
I can release her from the pain daily of an unequal mar- 
35 riage, and the struggle to conceal it. She shall be as free 
as I can render her.” 

“Make her reparation!” exclaimed Tackleton, twisting 
and turning his great ears with his hands. “There must 
be something wrong here. You didn’t say that, of course.” 
30 The Carrier set his grip upon the collar of the Toy-mer- 
chant, and shook him like a reed. 

“Listen to me!” he said. “And take care that you hear 
me right. Listen to me. Do I speak plainly ?” 

“Very plainly indeed,” answered Tackleton. 

“As if I meant it ?” 

“ Verv much as if you meant it.” 


35 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


271 


“I sat upon that hearth, last night, all night,” exclaimed 
the Carrier. “On the vspot where she has often sat be- 
side me, with her sweet face looking into mine. I called up 
her whole life, day by day; I had her dear self, in its every 
passage, in review before me. And upon my soul she is 
innocent, if there is One to judge the innocent and the 
guilty!” 

Staunch Cricket on the Hearth! royal household Fairies! 

“Passion and distrust have left me!” said the Carrier; 
“and nothing but my grief remains. In an unhappy mo- 
ment some old lover, better suited to her tastes and years 
than I ; forsaken, perhaps, for me, against her will; returned. 
In an unhappy moment: taken by surprise, and wanting 
time to think of what she did: she made herself a party to 
his treachery, by concealing it. Last night she saw him 
in the interview we witnessed. It was wrong. But other- 
wise than this, she is innocent if there is Truth on earth!” 

“If that is your opinion ” Tackleton began. 

“So, let her go!” pursued the Carrier. “Go, with my 
blessing for the many happy hours she has given me, and 
my forgiveness for any pang she has caused me. Let her 
go, and have the peace of mind I wish her! She’ll never 
hate me. She’ll learn to like me better, when I’m not a 
drag upon her, and she wears the chain I have riveted, 
more lightly. This is the day on which I took her, with so 
little thought for her enjoyment, from her home. To-day 
she will return to it; and I will trouble her no more. Her 
father and mother will be here to-day — we had made a little 
plan for keeping it together — and they shall take her home. 
I can trust her, there, or anjwTere. She leaves me with- 
out blame, and she will live so I am sure. If I should die— 
I may perhaps while she is still young; I have lost some 
courage in a few hours — she’ll find that I remembered her, 
and loved her to the last! This is the end of what you 
showed me. Now, it’s over !” 

“Oh no, John, not over. Do not say it’s over yet! Not 


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c|uite yet. I have heard your noble words. I could not 
steal away, pretending to be ignorant of what has affected 
me with such deep gratitude. Do not say it’s over till 
the clock has struck again !” 

5 She had entered shortly after Tackleton; and had re- 
mained there. She never looked at Tackleton, but fixed 
her eyes upon her husband. But she kept away from him, 
setting as wide a space as possible between them; and 
though she spoke with most impassioned earnestness, she 
10 went no nearer to him even then. How different in this, 
from her old self ! 

“No hand can make the clock which will strike again for 
me the hours that are gone,” replied the Carrier, with a 
faint smile. “But let it be so, if you will my dear. It will 
15 strike soon. It’s of little matter what we say. I’d try to 
please you in a harder case than that.” 

“Well!” muttered Tackleton. “I must be off, for when 
the clock strikes again, it’ll be necesssary for me to be upon 
my way to church. Good morning, John Peerybingle. 

20 I’m sorry to be deprived of the pleasure of your company. 
Sorry for the loss, and the occasion of it too 1” j 

“I have spoken plainly?” said the Carrier, accompany- | 
• ing him to the door. 

“Oh, quite!” 

25 “And you’ll remember what I have said ?” 

“Why, if you compel me to make the observation,” said 
Tackleton; previously taking the precaution of getting 
into his chaise; “I must say that it was so very unexpected, 
that I’m far from being likely to forget it.” 

30 “The better for us both,” returned the Carrier. “Good 
bye. I give you joy!” 

“I wish I could give it to you,'’ said Tackleton. “As J 
can’t; thank’ ee. Between ourselves (as I told you before, 
eh?) I don’t much think I shall have the less joy in my mar- 
35 ried life, because May hasn’t been too officious about me, 


THE CKICKET 0\ THE HEARTH 


273 


and too demonstrative. Good bye! Take eare of your- 
self.” 

The Carrier stood looking after him until he was smaller 
in the distance than his horse’s flowers and favours near at 
hand ; and then, with a deep sigh, went strolling like a rest- 
less, broken man, among some neighbouring elms; unwill- 
ing to return until the clock was on the eve of striking. 

His little wife, being left alone, sobbed piteously ; but 
often dried her eyes and checked herself, to say how good 
he was, how excellent he was! and once or twice she 
laughed; so heartily, triumphantly, and incoherently (still 
crying all the time), that Tilly quite horrified. 

“Ow if you please don’t!” said Tilly. “It’s enough to 
dead and bury the Baby, so it is if you please.” 

“Will you bring him sometimes, to see his father, Tilly,” 
inquired the mistress; drying her eyes; “when I can’t live 
here, and have gone to my old home ?” 

“Ow if you please don’t!” cried Tilly, throwing back her 
head, and bursting into a howl; she looked at the moment 
uncommonly like Boxer; “Ow if you please don’t! Ow, 
what has everybody gone and been and done with every- 
body, making everybody else so wretched! Ow-w-w-w!” 

The soft-hearted Slowboy trailed off at this juncture, 
into such a deplorable howl: the more tremendous from its 
long suppression: that she must infallibly have awakened 
the Baby, and frightened him into something serious 
(probably convulsions), if her eyes had not encountered 
Caleb Plummer, leading in his daughter. This spectacle 
restoring her to a sense of the proprieties, she stood for some 
few moments silent, with her mouth wide open: and then 
posting off to the bed on which the Baby lay asleep, 
danced in a weird. Saint Vitus manner on the floor, and at 
the same time rummaged with her face and head among 
the bedclothes : apparently deriving much relief from those 
extraordinary operations. 

“Mary!” .said Bertha. “Not at the marriage!” 


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“I told her you would not be there, Mum,’’ whispered 
Caleb. “I heard as much last night. But bless you,” said 
the little man, taking her tenderly by both hands, don’t 
care for what they say; I don’t believe them. There an’t 
much of me but that little should be torn to pieces sooner 
than I’d trust a word against you !” 

He put his arms about her neck and hugged her, as a 
child might have hugged one of his own dolls. 

“Bertha couldn’t stay at home this morning,” said Caleb. 
“She was afraid, I know, to hear the Bells ring: and 
couldn’t trust herself to be so near them on their wedding- 
day. So we started in good time, and came here. I have 
been thinking of what I have done,” said Caleb, after a 
moment’s pause; “I have been blaming myself till I hardly 
knew what to do or where to turn, for the distress of mind 1 
have caused her; and I have come to the conclusion that I’d 
better, if you’ll stay with me. Mum, the while, tell her the 
truth. You’ll stay with me the while?” he inquired, trem- 
bling from head to foot, “I don’t know what effect it may 
have upon her; I don’t know what she’ll think of me; I 
don’t know that she’ll ever care for her poor father after- 
wards. But it’s best for her that she should be unde- 
ceived; and I must bear the consequences as I deserve I” 

“Mary,” said Bertha, “where is your .hand 1 Ah! Here 
it is; here it is!” pressing it to her lips, with a smile, and 
drawing it through her arm. “I heard them speaking 
softly among themselves, last night, of some blame against 
you . They were wrong . ’ ’ 

The Carrier’s Wife was silent. Caleb answered for her. 

“They were wrong,” he said. 

“I knew it!” cried Bertha, proudly. “I told them so. I 
scorned to hear a word! Blame her with justice!” she 
pressed the hand between her own, and the soft cheek 
against her face. “No! I am not so Blind as that.” 

Her father went on one side of her, while Dot, remained 
upon the other: holding her hand. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


275 


“I know you all/’ said Bertha, “belter than you think. 
But none so well as her. Not even you father. There is 
nothing half so real and so true about me, as she is. If 1 
could be restored to sight this instant, and not a word were 
spoken, I could choose her from a crowd ! My sister!” 

“Bertha, my dear!” said Caleb, “ I have something on 
my mind 1 want to tell you, while we three are alone. Hear 
me kindly! I have a confession to make to you, my Dar- 
ling.” 

“A confession, father?” 

“I have wandered from the Truth and lost myself, my 
child,” said Caleb, with a pitiable expression in his be- 
wildered face. “I have wandered from the Truth, intend- 
ing to be kind to you; and have been cruel.” 

She turned her wonder-stricken face towards him, and 
repeated “Cruel !” 

“He accuses himself too strongly, Bertha,” said Dot. 
“You’ll say so, presently. You’ll be the first to tell him 
so.” 

“He cruel to me!” cried Bertha, with a smile of incredu- 
lity. 

“Not meaning it, my child,” said Caleb. “But I have 
been ; though I never sus})ected it, till yesterday. My dear 
Blind Daughter, hear me and forgive me ! The world you 
live in, heart of mine, doesn’t exist as I have represented it. 
The eyes you have trusted in, have been false to you.” 

She turned her wonder-stricken face towards him still; 
but drew back, and clung closer to her friend. 

“Your road in life was rough, my poor one,” said Caleb, 
“and I meant to smooth it for you. I have altered objects, 
changed the characTers of people, invented many things 
that never have been, to make you happier. I have had 
concealments from you, jmt deceptions on you, God forgive 
me! and surrounded you with fancies.” 

“But living people are not fancies?” she said hurriedly, 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


and turning very pale, and still retiring from him. “You 
can’t change them.” 

“I have done so, Bertha,” pleaded Caleb. “There is 

one person that you know, my Dove ” 

5 “Oh father! why do you say, I know?” she answered, 
in a tone of keen reproach. “What and whom do / 
know! I who have no leader! I so.miserably blind!” 

In the anguish of her heart, she stretched out her hands, 
as if she were groping her way; then spread them, in a 
10 manner most forlorn and sad, upon her face. 

“The marriage that takes place to-day,” said Caleb, “is 
with a stern, sordid, grinding man. A hard master to you 
and me, my dear, for many years. Ugly in his looks, and 
in his nature. Cold and callous always. Unlike what I 
15 have painted him to you in everything, my child. In 
everything.” 

“Oh why,” cried the Blind Girl, tortured, as it seemed, 
almost beyond endurance, “why did you ever do this! 
Why did you ever fill my heart so full, and then come in 
20 like Death, and tear away the objects of my love! Oh 
Heaven, how blind I am! How helpless and alone!” 

Her afflicted father hung his head, and offered no reply 
but in his })enitence and sorrow. 

She had been but a short time in this passion of regret, 
25 when the Cricket on the Hearth, unheard by all but her, 
began to chirp. Not merrily, but in a low, faint, sorrowing 
way. It was so mournful, that her tears began to flow; and 
when the Presence which had been beside the Carrier all 
night, appeared behind her, pointing to her father, they 
30 fell down like rain. 

She heard the Cricket- voice more plainly soon; and was 
conscious, through her blindness, of the Presence hovering 
about her father. 

“Mary,” said the Blind Girl, “tell me what my home is. 
35 What it truly is.” 

“It is a poor place, Bertha; very poor and bare indeed. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


277 


Tlie house will scarcely kee}) out wind and rain another 
winter. It is as roughly shielded from the weather, 
Bertha,” Dot continued in a low, clear voice, “ as your 
])oor father in his sackcloth coat.” 

The Blind Girl, greatly agitated, rose, and led the Car- 5 
rier’s little wife aside. 

“Those presents that I took such care of; that came 
almost at my wish, and were so dearly welcome to me,” 
she said, trembling; “where did they come from ! Did you 
send them ?” lo 

“No.” 

“Who then?” 

Dot saw that she knew, already; and was silent. The 
Blind Girl spread her hands before her face again. But in 
(jiiite another manner now. 15 

“Dear Mary, a moment. One moment! More this 
way. Speak softly to me. You are true, I know. You’d 
not deceive me now; would you ?” 

“No, Bertha, indeed!” 

“No, I am sure you would not. You have too much 20 
pity for me. Mary look across the room to w^here we were 
just now; to where my father is — my father, so compassion- 
ate and loving to me — and tell me what you see.” 

“I see,” said Dot, w^ho understood her Avell; “an old 
man sitting in a chair, and leaning sorrowfully on the back, 25 
with his face resting on his hand. As if his child should 
comfort him, Bertha.” 

“Yes, yes. She wdll. Go on.” 

“He is an old man, worn Avith care and work. He is a 
spare, dejected, thoughtful, grey-haired man. I see him 30 
now, despondent and bowed doAvn, and striving against 
nothing. But, Bertha, I have seen him many times before ; 
and striving hard in many ways for one great sacred object. 
And I honour his grey head, arid bless him 1” 

The Blind Girl broke away from her; and throwing 35 


278 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

herself upon her knees before him, took the grev head to 
her breast. 

“It is my sight restored .It is my sight!” she cried. “I 
have been blind, and now my eyes are open. I never 
5 knew him! To think I might have died, and never truly 
seen the father, who has been so loving to me!” 

There were no words for Caleb’s emotion. 

“There is not a gallant figure on this earth,” exclaimed 
the Blind Girl, holding him in her embrace, “that I would 
10 love so dearly, and would cherish so devotedly, as this! 
The greyer, and more worn, the dearer, father! Never 
let them say I am blind again. There’s not a furrow in his 
face, there’s not a hair upon his head, that shall be forgot- 
ten in my prayers and thanks to Heaven !” 

15 Caleb managed to articulate “My Bertha !” 

“And in my Blindness I believed him, ” said the girl, 
caressing him with tears of exquisite affection, “to be so 
different! And having him beside me, day by day, so 
mindful of me always, never dreamed of this !” 

20 “The fresh smart father in the blue coat, Bertha,” said 
poor Caleb. “He’s gone!” 

“Nothing is gone,” she answered. “Dearest father, no! 
Everything is here — in you. The father that I loved 
so well; the father that I never loved enough, and never 
25 knew; the Benefactor whom I first began to reverence 
and love, because he had such sympathy for me; All are 
here in you. Nothing is dead to me. The Soul of all 
that was most dear to me is here — here, with the worn 
face, aud the grey head. And I am not blind, father, any 
30 longer!” 

Dot’s whole attention had been concentrated, during 
this discourse, upon the father and daughter; but looking, 
now, towards the little Haymaker in the Moorish meadow, 
she saw that the clock was within a few minutes of strik- 
es ing; and fell, immediately, into a nervous and excited state. 

“Father,” said Bertha, hesitating. “Mary.” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


279 


“Yes, my dear,” returned Caleb. “Here she is.” 

“There is no change in her. You never told me any- 
thing of /ler that was not true ?” 

“I should have done it, my dear, I am afraid,” returned 
Caleb, “ if I could have made her better than she was. 5 
But I must have changed her for the worse, if I had 
changed her at all. Nothing could improve her, Bertha.” 

Confident as the Blind Girl had been when she asked the 
question, her delight and pride in the reply and her renewed 
embrace of Dot, were charming to behold. lo 

“More changes than you think for, may happen though, 
my dear,” said Dot. “Changes for the better, I mean; 
changes for great joy to some of us. You mustn’t let them 
startle you too much, if any such should ever happen, and 
affect you ? Are those wheels upon the road ? You’ve a 1.5 
quick ear, Bertha. Are they wheels ?” 

“Yes. Coming very fast.” 

“I — I — I know you have a quick ear,” said Dot, placing 
her hand upon her heart, and evidently talking on, as fast 
as she could, to hide its palpitating state, “because I have 20 
noticed it often, and because you were so quick to find out 
that strange step last night. Though why you should 
have said, as I well recollect you did say, Bertha, ‘Whose 
step is that!’ and why you should have taken any greater 
observation of it than of any other step, I don’t know, a*) 
Though as I said just now, there are great changes in the 
world: great changes: and we can’t do better than prepare 
ourselves to be surprised at hardly anything.” 

Caleb wondered what this meant; perceiving that she 
spoke to him, no less than to his daughter; He saw her, 3 c 
with astonishment, so fluttered and distressed that she 
could scarcely breathe; and holding to a chair, to save 
herself from falling. 

“They are wheels indeed!” she panted. “Coming 
nearer! Nearer! Very close! And now you hear them 35 
stopping at the garden-gate! And now you hear a step 


280 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


outside the door — tile same step, Bertha, is it not! — and 
now ! — 

She uttered a wild cry of uncontrollable delight; and 
running up to Caleb put her hands upon his eyes, as a 
5 young man rushed into the room, and flinging away his hat 
into the air, came sweeping down upon them. 

“Is it over cried Dot. 

“Yes!” 

“Happily over?” 

10 “Yes!” 

“Do you recollect the voice, dear Caleb? Did you ever 
hear the like of it before ?” cried Dot. 

“If my boy in the Golden South Americas was alive” — 
said Caleb, trembling. 

15 “He is alive!” shrieked. Dot, removing her hands from 
his eyes, and clapping them in ecstasy; “look at him I See 
where he stands before you, healthy and strong! Your 
own dear son! Your own dear living, loving brother, 
Bertha!” 

20 All honour to the little creature for her transports! All 
honour to her tears and laughter, when the three were 
locked in one another’s arms! All honour to the hearti- 
ness with which she met the sunburnt sailor-fellow, with 
his dark streaming hair, half way, and never turned her 
25 rosy little mouth aside, but suffered him to kiss it, freely, 
and to press her to his bounding heart ! 

And honour to the Cuckoo too — ^why not! — for bursting 
out of the trap-door in the Moorish Palace like a house- 
breaker, and hiccoughing twelve times on the assembled 
30 company, as if he had got drunk for joy 1 

The Carrier, entering, started back: and well he might: 
to find himself in such good company. 

“Look, John!” said Caleb, exultingly, “look here! My 
own boy from the Golden South Americas 1 My own son 1 
35 Him that you fitted out, and sent away yourself ; him 
you were always such a friend to 1” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 281 

The Carrier advanced to seize him by the hand; but re- 
coiling, as some feature in his face awakened a remem- 
brance of the Deaf Man in the Cart, $aid: “Edward! Was 
it you V 

“Now tell him allT’ cried Dot. “Tell him all, Edward; 
and don’t spare me, for nothing shall make me spare my- 
self in his eyes, ever again.” 

“I was the man,” said Edward. 

“And could you steal, disguised, into the house of your 
old friend?” rejoined the Carrier. “There was a frank 
boy once — how many years is it, Caleb, since we heard that 
he was dead, and had it proved, we thought? — who never 
would have done that.” 

“There was a generous friend of mine, once: more a 
father to me than a friend,” said Edward, “Who never 
would have judged me, or any other man, unheard. You 
were he. So I am certain you will hear me now.” 

The Carrier, with a troubled glance at Dot, who still 
kept far away from him, replied “Weill that’s but fair. I 
will.” 

“You must know that when I left here, a boy,” said 
Edward, “I was in love: and my love was returned. She 
was a very young girl, who perhaps (you may tell me) didn’t 
know her own mind. But I knew mine; and I had a pas- 
sion for her.” 

“You had!” exclaimed the Carrier. “You!” 

“Indeed I had,” returned the other. “And she returned 
it. I have ever since believed she did; and now I am sure 
she did.” 

“Heaven help me!” said the Carrier. “This is worse 
than all.” 

“Constant to her,” said Edward, “and returning, full of 
hope, after many hardships and perils, to redeem my part of 
our old contract, I heard, tw^enty miles away, that she was 
false to me; that she had forgotten me; and had bestowed 
herself upon another and a richer man. I had no mind to 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


reproach her; but I wished to see her, and to prove beyond 
dispute that this was true. I hoped she might have been 
forced into it, against her own desire and recollection. It 
would be small comfort, but it would be some, 1 thought: 
6 and on I came. That I might have the truth, the real 
truth; observing freely for myself, and judging for myself, 
without obstruction on the one hand, or presenting my own 
influence (if I had any) before her, on the other; I dressed 
myself unlike myself — you know how; and waited on the 
10 road — you know where. You had no suspicion of me; 
neither had — had she,” pointing to Dot, “until I whispered 
in her ear at that fireside, and she so nearly betrayed me.” 

“But when she knew that Edward was alive, and had 
come back,” sobbed Dot, now speaking for herself, as she 
had burned to do, all through this narrative; “and when 
she knew his purpose, she ‘advised him by all means to 
keep his secret close; for his old friend John Peerybingle 
was much too open in his nature, and too clumsy in all 
artifice — being a clumsy man in general,” said Dot, half 
20 laughing and half crying — “to keep it for him. And when 
she — that’s me, John,” sobbed the little w^oman — “told 
him all, and how his sweetheart had believed him to be 
dead; and how she had at last been over-persuaded by her 
mother into a marriage which the silly, dear old thing called 
25 advantageous; and when she — that’s me again, John — 
told him they were not yet married (though close upon it), 
and that it would be nothing but a sacrifice if it went on, for 
there was no love on her side; and when he went nearly mad 
with joy to hear it; then she — that’s me again — said she 
30 would go between them, as she had often done before in 
old tunes, John, and would sound his sweetheart and be 
sure that what she — me again, John — said and thought 
was right. And it was right, John! And they were 
brought together, John! And they were married, John, an 
35 hour ago! And here’s the Bride! And Gruff and Tackle- 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 283 

ton may die a bachelor! And T’m a happy little woman, 
May, God bless you 1” 

Shew^as an irresistible little woman, if that be anything to 
the purpose; and never so completely irresistible as in her 
present transports. There never were congratulations so 
endearing and delicious, as those she lavished on herself 
and on the Bride. 

Amid the tumult of emotions in his breast, the honest 
Carrier had stood, confounded. Flying, now, towards 
her, Dot stretched out her hand to stop him, and retreated 
as before. 

“No, John, no! Hear all! Don’t love me any more, 
John, till you’ve heard every word I have to say. It was 
wrong to have a secret from you, John. I’m very sorry. I 
didn’t think it any harm, till I came and sat down by you 
on the little stool last night; but when I knew by what was 
written in your face, that you had seen me walking in the 
gallery with Edward, and knew what you thought; I felt 
how giddy and how wrong it was. But oh, dear John, 
how could you, could you, think so !” 

Little woman, how she sobbed again ! John Peerybingle 
would have caught her in his arms. But no; she wouldn’t 
let him. 

“Don’t love me yet, please, John! Not for a long time 
yet! When I was sad about this intended marriage, dear, 
it was because I remembered May and Edward such young 
lovers; and knew that her heart was far away from Tackle- 
ton. You believe that, now. Don’t you, John ?” 

John was going to make another rush at this appeal; but 
she stopped him again. 

“No; keep there, please, John ! When I laugh at you, as 
I sometimes do, John; and call you clumsy, and a dear old 
goose, and names of that sort, it’s because I love you, John 
so well; and take such pleasure in your ways; and wouldn’t 
see you altered in the least respect to have you made a 
King to-morrow.” 


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“Hooroar!” said Caleb with unusual vigour. “My 
opinion !” 

“And when I speak of people being middle-aged, and 
steady, John, and pretend that we are a humdrum couple, 
5 going on in a jog-trot sort of way, it’s only because I’m 
such a silly little thing, John, that I like, sometimes, to act 
a kind of Play with Baby, and all that: and make believe.” 

She saw that he was coming; and stopped him again. 
But she was very nearly too late. 

“No, don’t love me for another minute or two, if you 
please, John ! What I want most to tell you, I have kept to 
the last. My dear, good, generous John; when we were 
talking the other night about the Cricket, I had it on my 
lips to say, that at first I did not love you quite so dearly as 
15 I do now; that when I first came home here, I was half 
afraid I mightn’t learn to love you every bit as well as I 
hoped and prayed I might — being so very young, John. 
But, dear John, every day and hour, I loved you more 
and more. And if I could have loved you better than I do, 
20 the noble words I heard you say this morning, would have 
made me. But I can’t. All the affection that I had (it 
was a great deal, John) I gave you, as you well deserve, 
long, long ago, and I have no more left to give. Now, 
my dear Husband, take me to your heart again ! That’s 
25 my home, John ; and never, never think of sending me to 
any other!” 

You never will derive so much delight from seeing a 
glorious little woman in the arms of a third party, as you 
would have felt if you had seen Dot run into the Carrier’s 
30 embrace. It was the most complete, unmitigated, soul- 
fraught little piece of earnestness that ever you beheld in 
all your days. 

You may be sure the Carrier was in a state of perfect 
rapture; and you may be sure Dot v/as likewise; and you 
35 may be sure they all were, inclusive of Miss Slowboy, who 
cried copiously for joy, and, wishing to include her young 


THE CRICKET ON THt. HEARTH 


285 


charge in the general interchange of congratulations, 
handed round the Baby to everybody in succession, as if it 
were something to drink. 

But now the sound of wheels was heard again outside the 
door; and somebody exclaimed that Gruff and Tackleton 5 
was coming back. Speedily that worthy gentleman ap- 
peared: looking warm and flustered. 

“Why, what the Devil’s this, John Peerybingle !” said 
Tackleton. “There’s some mistake. I appointed Mrs. 
Tackleton to meet me at the church ; and I’ll swear I passed lo 
her on the road, on her way here. Oh ! here she is ! I beg 
your pardon. Sir; I haven’t the pleasure of knowing you; ' 
but if you can do me the favour to spare this young lady, 
she has rather a particular engagement this morning.” 

“But I can’t spare her,” returned Edward. “I couldn’t is 
think of it.” 

“What do you mean, you vagabond?” said Tackleton. 

“I mean, that as I can make allowance for your being 
vexed,” returned the other, with a smile, “I am as deaf to 
harsh discourse this morning, as I was to all discourse last 20 
night.” 

The look that Tackleton bestowed upon him, and the 
start he gave! 

“I am sorry. Sir,” said Edward, holding out May’s left 
hand, and especially the third finger; “that the young lady 26 
can’t accompany you to church; but as she has been there 
once, this morning, perhaps you’ll excuse her.” 

Tackleton looked hard at the third finger; and took a 
little piece of silver paper, apparently containing a ring, 
from his waistcoat pocket. sc 

“Miss Slowboy,” said Tackleton. “Will you have the 
kindness to throw that in the fire? Thank’ ee.” 

“It was a previous engagement: quite an old engage- 
ment: that prevented my wife from keeping her appoint- 
ment with you, I assure you,” said Edward. 35 

“Mr. Tackleton will do me the justice to acknowledge 


286 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


that I revealed it to him faithfully; and that I told him 
many times, I never could forget it,^^ said May, blushing. 

“Oh certainly!” said Tackleton. “Oh to be sure. Oh 
it’s all right. It’s quite correct. Mrs. Edward Plummer, 
5 I infer?” 

“That’s the name,” returned the bridegroom. 

“Ah, I shouldn’t have known you. Sir,” said Tackleton: 
scrutinizing his face narrowly, and making a low bow. “I 
give you joy, Sir!” 

10 “Thank’ee.” 

“Mrs. Peerybingle,” said Tackleton, turning suddenly to 
where she stood with her husband; “I am sorry. You 
haven’t done me a very great kindness, but, upon my life 1 
am sorry. You are better than I thought you. John 
15 Peerybingle, I am sorry. You understand me; that’s 
enough. It’s quite correct, ladies and gentlemen all, and 
^ ])erfectly satisfactory. Good morning!” 

With these words he carried it off, and carried himself off 
too: merely stopping at the door, to take the flowers and 
20 favoui^s from his horse’s head, and to kick that animal once 
in the ribs, as a means of informing him that there was a 
screw loose in his arrangements. 

Of course it became a serious duty now, to make such a 
day of it, as should mark these events for a high Feast and 
25 Festival in the Peerybingle Calendar for evermore. Ac- 
cordingly, Dot went to work to produce such an entertain- 
ment, as should reflect undying honour on the house and 
every one concerned ; and in a very short space of time, she 
was up to her dimpled elbows in flour, and whitening the 
30 Carrier’s coat, every time he came near her, by stopping 
him to give him a kiss. That good fellow washed the 
greens, and peeled the turnips, and broke the plates, and 
upset iron pots full of cold water on the fire, and made him- 
self useful in all sorts of ways : while a couple of professional 
35 assistants, hastily called in from somewhere in the neigh- 
bourhood, as on a point of life or death, ran against each 


TELE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


287 


other in all the doorways and round all the corners ; and 
everybody tumbled over Tilly Slowboy and the Baby, 
everywhere. Tilly never came out in such force before. 
Her ubiquity was the theme of general admiration. She 
was a stumbling-block in the passage at five-and-twehty 
minutes past two; a man-trap in the kitchen at half-past 
two precisely; and a pitfall in the garret at five-aiid-twenty 
minutes to three. The Baby’s head was, as it were, a test 
and touchstone for every description of matter, animal, 
vegetable, and mineral. Nothing was in use that day that lo 
didn’t come, at some time or other, into close acquaintance 
with it. 

Then, there was a great Expedition set on foot to go and 
find out Mrs. Fielding; and to be disrhally penitent to that 
excellent gentlewoman; and to bring her back, by force if i5 
needful, to be happy and forgiving. And when the Expe- 
dition first discovered her, she would listen to no terms at 
all, but said, an unspeakable number of times, that ever 
she should have lived to see the day! and couldn’t be got to 
say anything else, except “Now carry me to the grave;” 20 
which seemed absurd, on account of her not being dead, 
or anything at all like it. After a time, she lapsed into a state 
of dreadful calmness, and observed, that when that unfortu- 
nate train of circumstances had occurred in the Indigo 
Trade, she had foreseen that she would be exposed, during 2C 
her whole life, to every species of insult and contumely ; and 
that she was glad to find it was the case ; and begged they 
wouldn’t trouble themselves about her, — for what was 
she? oh, dear! a nobody! — but would forget that such a 
being lived, and would take their course in life without her. 3 u 
From this bitterly sarcastic mood, she passed into an 
angry one, in which she gave vent to the remarkable ex- 
pression that the worm would turn if trodden on; and 
after that, she yielded to a soft regret, and said, if they had 
only given her their confidence, what might she not have 35. 
had it in her power to suggest! Taking advantage of this 


288 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


crisis in her feelings, the Expedition embraced her; and 
she very soon had her gloves on, and was on her way to 
John Peerybingle’s in a state of unimpeachable gentility; 
with a paper parcel at her side containing a cap of state, 
5 almost as tall, and quite as stiff, as a mitre. 

Then, there were Dot’s father and mother to come, in 
another little chaise; and they were behind their time; and 
fears were entertained; and there was much looking out for 
them down the road; and Mrs. Fielding always would look 
10 in the wrong and morally impossible direction; and being 
apprised thereof, hoped she might take the liberty of looking 
where she pleased. At last they came: a chubby little 
couple, jogging along in a snug and comfortable little way 
that quite belonged to the Dot family: and Dot and her 
16 mother, side by side, were wonderful to see. They were 
so like each other. 

Then, Dot’s mother had to renew her acquaintance with 
May’s mother; and May’s mother always stood on her 
gentility; and Dot’s mother never stood on anything but 
30 her active little feet. And old Dot: so to call Dot’s father, 
I forgot it wasn’t his right name, but never mind: took 
liberties, and shook hands at first sight, and seemed to 
think a cap but so much starch and muslin, and didn’t 
defer himself at all to the Indigo Trade, but said there was 
25 no help for it now; and, in Mrs. Fielding’s summing up, 
was a good-natured kind of man — but coarse, my dear. 

I wouldn’t have missed Dot, doing the honours in her 
wedding-gown: my benison on her bright face! for 
any money. No! nor the good Carrier, so jovial and so 
30 ruddy, at the bottom of the table. Nor the brown, fresh 
sailor-fellow, and his handsome wife. Nor any one 
among them. To have missed the dinner would have 
been to miss as jolly and as stout a meal as man need eat; 
and to have missed the overflowing cups in which they 
35 drank The Wedding-Day, would have been the greatest 
miss of all. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


289 


After dinner, Caleb sang the song about the Sparkling 
Bowl ! As I’m a living man : hoping to keep so, for a year 
or two: he sang it through. 

And, by the bye, a most unlooked-for incident occurred, 
just as he finished the last verse. 

There was a tap at the door; and a man came stagger- 
ing in, without saying with your leave, or by your leave, 
with something heavy on his head. Setting this down in 
the middle of the table, symmetrically in the centre of the 
nuts and apples, he said : 

“Mr. Tackleton’s compliments, and as he hasn’t got no 
use for the cake himself, p’raps you’ll eat it.” 

And with those words, he walked off. 

There was some surprise among the company, ^as you 
may imagine. Mrs. Fielding, being a lady of infinite dis- 
cernment, suggested that the cake was poisoned, and re- 
lated a narrative of a cake, which, within her knowledge, 
had turned a seminary for young ladies, blue. But she 
was overruled by acclamation; and the cake was cut bv 
May, with much ceremony and rejoicing. 

I don’t think any one had tasted it, when there came an- 
other tap at the door, and the same man appeared again, 
having under his arm a vast brown-paper parcel. 

“Mr. Tackleton’s compliments, and he’s sent a few toys 
for the Babby. They ain’t ugly.” 

After the delivery of which expressions, he retired again. 

The whole party would have experienced great difficulty 
in finding words for their astonishment, even if they had 
had ample time to seek them. But they had none at all; 
for the messenger had scarcely shut the door behind him, 
when there came another tap, and Tackleton himself 
walked in. 

“Mrs. Peerybingle !” said the Toy-merchant, hat in 
hand. “I’m sorry. I’m more sorry than I was this 
morning. I have had time to think of it. John Peery- 
bingle! I’m sour by disposition; but I can’t help being 


5 

10 

15 

20 

35 

30 

35 


5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 

35 


290 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


sweetened, more or less, by coming face to face with such a 
man as you. Caleb! This unconscious little nurse gave 
me a broken hint last night, of wdiich I have found the 
thread. I blush to think how easily I might have bound 
you and your daughter to me; and what a miserable idiot 1 
was, when I took her for one! Friends, one and all, my 
house is very lonely to-night. I have not so much as a 
Cricket on my Hearth. I have scared them all away. 
Be gracious to me; let me join this happy party!” 

He was at home in five minutes. You never saw such a 
fellow. What had he been doing with himself all his life, 
never to have known, before, his great capacity of being 
jovial! Or what had the Fairies been doing with him, to 
have eff ec^ted such a change ! 

“John ! you won’t send me home this evening; will you ?” 
whispered Dot. 

He had been very near it though ! 

There wanted but one living creature to make the parly 
complete; and, in the twinkling of an eye, there he was: 
very thirsty with hard running, and engaged in hopeless 
endeavours to squeeze his head into a narrow pitcher. He 
had gone with the cart to its journey’s end, very much dis- 
gusted with the absence of his master, and stupendously 
rebellious to the Deputy. After lingering about the stable 
for some little time, vainly attempting to incite the old 
horse to the mutinous act of returning on his own account, 
he had walked into the tap-room and laid himself down 
before the fire. But suddenly yielding to the conviction 
that the Deputy was a humbug, and must be abandoned, 
he had got up again, turned tail, and come home. 

There was a dance in the evening. With which general 
mention of that recreation, I should have left it alone, if I 
had not some reason to suppose that it was quite an 
original dance, and one of a most uncommon figure. It was 
formed in an odd way; in this way. 

Edward, that sailor-fellow — a good free dashing sort of a 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


291 


fellow he was — had been telling them various marvels con- 
cerning parrots, and mines, and Mexicans, and gold dust, 
when all at once he took it in his head to jump up from 
his seat and propose a dance; for Bertha’s harp was there, 
and she had such a hand upon it as you seldom hear. Dot 
(sly little piece of affectation when she chose) said her 
dancing days were over; I think because the Carrier was 
smoking his pipe, and she liked sitting by him, best. Mrs. 
Fielding had no choice, of course, but to. say her dancing 
(lays were over after that; and everybody said the same, 
except May; May was ready. 

So May and Edward get up, amid great applause, to 
dance alone ; and Bertha plays her liveliest tune. 

Well! if you’ll believe me, they have not been dancing 
five minutes, when suddenly the Carrier flings his pipe 
away, takes Dot round the waist, dashes out into the room, 
and starts off with her, toe and heel, quite wonderfully. 
Tackleton no sooner sees this, than he skims across to Mrs. 
Fielding, takes her round the waist, and follows suit. Old 
Dot no sooner sees this, than up he is, all alive, whisks off 
Mrs. Dot in the middle of the dance, and is the foremost 
there. Caleb no sooner sees this, than he clutches Tilly 
Slowboy by both hands and goes off at score; Miss Slow- 
boy, firm in the belief that diving hotly in among the other 
couples, and effecting any number of concussions with 
them, is your only principle of footing it. 

Hark! how the Cricket joins the music with its Chirj), 
Chirp, Chirp; and how the Kettle hums! 

But what is this ! Even as I listen to them, blithely, and 
turn towards Dot, for one last glimpse of a little figure very 
pleasant to me, she and the rest have vanished into air, and 
I am left alone. A Cricket sings upon the Hearth; a 
broken child’s-toy lies upon the ground; and nothing else 
remains. 


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NOTES 


THE CHRISTMAS CAROL 

Stave 1. page 31. Christmas Carol. A song or ballad “of joy cele- 
brating the birth of Christ. In England bands of men and children 
go about from door to door on Christmas eve singing ballads and 
taking part in the Christmas games and “ mummeries.” 

Note that the chapter divisions are called “staves;” in “The 
Cricket on the Hearth ” they are called “ chirps.” 

31. 5 ’Change. Abbreviation for exchange, the Royal Exchange, the 

centre of London commerce, lying between Threadneedle and Corn- 
hill streets. Opposite on the N. W. is the Bank of England ; to the 
S. W. is the Mansion House, (See Note 39. 10.) Over the doorway 
of the Exchange is the inscription: 

“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” 

Scrooge’s counting house was in this vicinity. “ Upon ’Change ” is 
often used as a general term meaning a place where men meet to 
transact business. . 

32. 3 Hamlet’s Father. See Shakspere’s play, “ Hamlet”: or the story 

in Lamb’s “Tales from Shakspere.” 

St. Paul’s Churchyard. The street round St. Paul’s Cathedral. 
The coffee-houses formerly iu this street w.ere the resort of famous 
authors and publishers. The cathedral is about half a mile west of 
the Royal Exhange. 

36. 29 Bedlam. The hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem (the name Bethle- 

hem corrupts to Bedlam) in London, founded in 1247; afterwards 
used as an asylum for lunatics. Bedlam is used as a synonym for 
madhouse. 

37. 21 Union Workhouse. A poorhouse supported by several parishes. 

See early chapters of “ Oliver Twist.” 

37. 25 Poor Law. The body of laws passed by Parliament for the relief 

of the poor. The law Scrooge had in mind was probably that passed 
by the Reformed Parliament in 1834. 

38. 25 Links. A torch made of tow (lint, link) and pitch, carried by “link- 

boys ” for lighting the streets. They are still used in London in fogs. 

89. 10 Mansion House. The official residence of the Lord Mayor of 
London. 


293 


294 


NOTES 


39. 18 Saint Dunstan. An English monk of the tenth century. He« 
became the chief advisor of King Eadred and King Eadgar, and by ^ 
the latter was created Archbishop of Canterbury. Legend says that ^ 
he was a skilful worker in metals, and that he was tempted while at . 
his forge by the Devil in the guise of a woman ; whereupon the good ^ 
saint seized the Evil Spirit by the nose with his glowing tongs. j;' 

39. 26 God bless you. A famous old carol, which begins; 

“God rest you, merry gentlemen, 

Let nothing you dismay, 

Remember Christ our Saviour 

* , T' 

Was born on Christmas Day, 

To save us all from Satan’s pow’r ; 

When we were gone astray ; \ 

/ \ 
(Chorus.) O tidings of comfort and joy.” 

40. 19 Copnhill. A street which derives its name from the fact that a 

corn market was once held here. (cf. Haymarket,) The Royal Ex- 
change, Mansion House, Cornhill, and St. Paul’s Cathedral are all in , 
the district of the old City of London, while 1 

40. 21 Camden Town is in the northern part of modern London, east of i 
Regent’s Park. • ^ 

41. 5 Knockep. “It (the front door) was ornamented with a gorgeous | 

brass knocker, curiously wrought, sometimes In the device of a dog, I, 
and sometimes of a lion’s head.’’ Irying; Knickerbocker. | 

42. 35 Upon the hob. When the old broad open fireplaces in which wood ^ 

Was burned were first fitted with grates for the burning of coal, a i 
structure was inserted to diminish the width. The top of this 5 
structure, the hoh, formed a level space upon which saucepans and , 
other utensils couW be set and kept hot. f 

[i 

43. 3 Dutch mepchant. After the revolution of 1688 which put William, | 

the Stadtholder of the United Netherlands, on the English throne, j 
many Dutch merchants established themselves in England. ! 

43. 15 Cains and Abels, etc. See a Bible dictionary for these Scriptural ? 
references. ' i 

48. 21 Ward. The officers of the ward, one of the divisions of the City of ' 
London. 

49. 11 Wise Men. See Gospel of Matthew II. 1-12. 

Stave 2. page 52. 29, First of Exchange. Debits and credits in the ^ 
business world are often settled without the actual transfer of } 
money by documents known as bills of exchange. These bills are f. 
drawn in duplicate or triplicate, 1st, 2nd, 3rd of exchange. When 
one is accepted, the others are void. j 

63. 1 United States Security. At the time when this story was written i 
several of the states had repudiated their bonds, and had thus | 
weakened United States credit abroad. i 


NOTES 


295 


68. 29 All Baba. Hero of The Forty Thieves, one of the tales from “ The 
Arabian Nights.” Accidently learning the magic words “Open 
Sesame,” he gained entrance to the. robbers’ cave and carried off 
their treasure. 

58. 33 Valentine and Orson. An old romance of the time of the Emperor 
Charlemagne. Orson and Valentine were twin sons of the Emperor 
of Constantinople. The former was carried off by a bear and lived 
uncouthly in the forest; Valentine grew up at the court of King 
Pepin. 

58. 35 Gate of Damascus. Bedreddin Hassin, in the Arabian Nights’ 

tale of that name, married the princess ; while the Hunchback who 
had sought her hand was seized by the genie and “set against the 
wall with his head downward until sunrise.” 

59. 11 Robin Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe, the hero of Daniel Defoe’s famous 

story, was shipwrecked on an uninhabited island, where he lived 
many years with his man Friday and his Parrot. 

64. 9 Sir Roger de Coverley. A dance like the Virginia reel, named for 
the courtly old gentleman whom Addison created in the pages of 
the “Spectator.” 

79. 19 Bob. A shilling (Slang). Note the play on words. 

staves, page 74. 2. Twelfth Cakes. Twelfth cakes were made for the 
feast of the Epiphany, or Twelfth Night (twelve days after Christ- 
mas). In them was placed a bean, and whoever chanced to get the 
piece containing it was made “ King of the Bean,” and presided over 
the boisterous games of Twelfth Night. 

Stave 5. page 114. 23. Laocodn. A Trojan priest of Apollo, who with 
his two sons was destroyed by two serpents sent from the sea by a 
goddess unfriendly to Troy. The group in marble (now in the 
Vatican at Rome) represents the serpents coiling about their 
victims. 

1 16. 14 Walkser. A slang term of incredulity. It is of uncertain origin. 

1 16. 24 Joe Millep. An English comic actor, d. 1738. He is said never to 
have made a joke, but a book of jests (pub. 1739) was wrongly attrib- 
. uted to him. A stale joke is known as a “ Joe Miller. ” 


THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY 

122. 19 Penrith. An ancient market town in N. W. England. 

122. 24 Gold in California. Discovered in 1849. 

1 23. 17 Poplar. A district in the east end of London where there are many 

docks; among others that of the famous East India Company. 

123. 32 Leadenhall street. Continues Cornhill (see p. 40) ; here was situ- 
ated the old House of the East India Company. 

126. 27 Pall Mall. The centre of fashionable club-life in London. 


296 


NOTES 


RICHARD DOUBLEDICK 

177. 3 Chatham and Rochester. Chatham, situated on the Medway 
river in Kent, is one of the principal naval arsenals and military 
stations of Great Britain. Rochester is continuous with Chatham, 
but unlike Chatham, is a quiet, old-fashioned place, dating its foun- 
dation from British times. 

1 77. 11 To take King George’s shilling. A man who wished to enlist as a 
soldier took a shilling from the recruiting officer as a sign of his 
enlistment. This practice was disallowed by an Act of 1879. 

1 77. 22 Regiment of the line. An infantry regiment. 

182. 6 Mars. The Roman god of war. 

182. 10 Trafalgar. The great English naval victory over the French 
October, 1805. 

182. 24 Peninsular War. The series of campaigns carried on from 1808 to 
1814 in Spain, Portugal, and southern France against Napoleon. 
Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington) commanded the English 
forces. 

182. 25 Badajos. A town of S. W. Spain captured by Wellington in April, 
1812. 

1 84. 8 Toulouse. By 1814 Wellington had fought his way into southern 
France. On April 10, the day before Napoleon signed his abdication, 
the victorious English general, ignorant of what was happening at 
Paris, fought and won the battle of Toulouse. 

184. 25 He was the only son. See Luke VII., 11-15. 

185.31 Quatre Bras and Ligny. In June, 1815, the armies of Europe 
fought in the Netherlands their last great battles against Napoleon. 
On June 10 the Emperor defeated the Prussians at Ligny; at the 
same time Marshal Ney, his brilliant cavalry leader, was fighting a 
drawn battle with the English at Quatre Bras. On June 18 the whole 
French army met the English under Wellington, aided by the Prus- 
sians under Bliieher, on the field of Waterloo just outside of Brus- 
sels (the English headquarters). Napoleon was so overwhelmingly 
defeated that he abdicated his throne and surrendered to the English, 
by whom he was sent a prisoner for life to the island of St. Helena. 
The battle of Waterloo has been a fascinating theme to 'novelists 
and poets. Read the description of the battle in Victor Hugo’s Le» 
chapters 65-78; of the scenes in Brussels in Thackeray’s 
Vanity Fair, chapters 30-32, and in Byron’s poem Waterloo, from 
Childe Harold, canto III., stanzas 21-23. 

1 89. 34 Avignon. A town of southern Prance on the Rhone. From 1309 to 

1376 the popes lived here under the control of the French kings. 

190. llAix. N. E. of Avignon. Both these towns date from Roman times, 

191. 7 Aladdin’s Palace. In the tale of Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp, 

in the Arabian Nights, the hero’s palace, built in a single night by^ 
the genie, contained a hall in which there were “fo\ir and twenty 
windows decorated with jewels. ” 


NOTES 


297 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

Chirp the First, page 195. 9. Haymaker. Clocks on which figures 
moved at regular intervals were not uncommon two generations 
agQ. See a description of the clock in the Cathedral of Strassburg 
for an elaborate piece of mechanism of this sort. 

196, 3 First proposition of Euclid. Euclid, a Greek geometer of the 
fourth century B. C., whose “Elements” are largely used in text 
books of geometry. The pattens made impressions which resembled 
over-lapping circles, suggestive of the figure used in demonstrating 
the first proposition of Euclid. 

1 96. 27 Royal George. An English man-of-war, which, while being refitted 
at Spithead, 1783, sank with nearly 800 people (sailors, marines, and 
visitors), on board. Efforts which were made to raise the .ship 
brought up only fragments. 

1 99. 8 Burden of the song. A chorus repeated at the end of each stanza: 
e.g. “ O tidings of comfort and joy ” in the carol referred to on p. 39. 

201. 18 Carrier. A carrier of parcels— a forerunner of the modern express 
company. 

20 1 . 31 Tilly Slowboy. The odd names so frequent in Dickens’s stories are 
probably not inventions of his fancy, but actual names discovered 
by the author in his rambles about London. 

209. 22 You ’re such an undeniable good sleeper . . . other six are. in 
the third century during a persecution of the Christians, seven 
Christian youths of Ephesus hid themselves in a cave, where they 
slept safely for three hundred and sixty years, until Christianity 
had become the religion of the Roman Empire. See S. Baring- 
Gould: “ Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.” 

213. 1 Golden South Americas. The search for fortune in the New 
World began with the discovery of gold in Mexico and South Amer- 
ica in the sixteenth century. 

223. 25 Household Gods. The protecting deities of the home; in this case 
the Cricket and the Kettle. 

Chirp the Second, page 236. 28. Turnpike Trust. Had under its super- 
vision the making and repairing of roads on which turnpikes and 
toll-gates were established by law in order that passing vehicles 
might be stopped until toll was paid. (For the derivation of turn- 
pike, see Cent. Diet. ) . Read Hawthorne’s ‘ • A Toll-Gathei er’s Day. ” 

251. 17 Welsh Giant. See the story of “ Jack the Giant-killer,” 







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